


Kintsugi

by worldformula (eihas)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-05 08:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17321366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eihas/pseuds/worldformula
Summary: When Sasori's parents died, his grand - uncle Ebizo broke the news to him, rather than waiting for him to figure it out on his own. He knew, of course, but that one act of consideration changed everything.AU where Sasori stayed in the village and became one of Sunagakure's legendary trinity. From his time as a Genin to his ascension as a historic figure in his village's history.[more characters to be added in the tags as they appear / Sasori centric.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Kintsugi, also known as Kintsukuroi, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise._

In the end, the person who had told him the truth was his grand-uncle. He came to his house one day during supper, the one day his grandmother was having a dinner meeting with some of the other Suna Council members. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, picking at something fried and sipping on some sort of spicy broth when Elder Ebizo broke the news.

“Your grandmother should be telling you this,” he said. “But she won’t. She’s afraid.”

“Tell me what, grand-uncle?” Sasori asked politely. His sleeves slid back down to his wrist, and he put the spoon down to push it back up, lest he stain it with his dinner.

Ebizo gestured to him, and Sasori scooted over beside him. His grand-uncle rolled his sleeve up for him.

“If you fold it like this, rather than pushing it up, it will stay up longer,” the older man said.

“Thank you,” Sasori replied kindly. “What is Granny so scared of? I thought shinobi weren’t supposed to be afraid of anything.”

“She’s not afraid as a shinobi,” Ebizo said simply. “She’s afraid as a grandmother … Sasori, my dear … your mother and father are not going to come home.”

There was a quiet pause, a moment of stillness. Neither moved, and the elder watched through bushy brows at his grand-nephew, who sat on his knees, as still as a doll. The quiet grew too long, too tense, and Ebizo wondered if Sasori too was afraid of breaking it, the way he was. But he was older, wiser, more responsible. If Chiyo wouldn’t take this burden, he would. So he spoke, if only to blanket the silence with some noise.

“Chiyo has been saying that they’re on mission after mission, but I thought you should --”

“I’ve known, grand-uncle,” the child said simply, getting back up to sit over on his side of the table. “I’ve known for a while.”

“...I see.”

Sasori sat back down, taking a spoonful of rice and mashing it up in his stew. Ebizo returned to his meal as well.

He had known. He had known for so long. The misery of wondering if his parents had, for some reason, abandoned him for missions (missions that were probably more fun than being with him, missions that were so much more important than him). The way he replayed his last conversation with them both before they had left many months ago, wondering if maybe he had upset them before they ran off past the village gates. The unbearable feeling of always having to _wait_.

He had always known, but it was something different to hear it out loud.

The ensuing quiet was not quite as heavy, but there was still a strain in the air. The only sound that echoed in the empty house was their utensils, metal against porcelain, wood against steel. Ebizo took another bite before coughing.

“Oh my, that’s much too spicy for me,” he said between coughs, taking a sip of water.

“Was it me?” Sasori asked at the same time, knowing how silly he sounded.

The elder coughed again, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

“Sasori,” he said gently. “You were never the problem. Ever.”

“Then who was it?”

There was a cold edge to his voice, a menacing frigidity that shocked Ebizo. Never had he heard something so venomous come from his sweet grand-nephew’s tongue.

They both knew what he was asking.

“What good will it do for you to know?” Ebizo responded. “What will you do when you find out?”

He did not answer. He just mashed another spoonful of rice in his stew.

That tone was much too intense for a boy so young, Ebizo thought. His mother would weep if she were here to hear it.

“Revenge is a fool’s errand, Sasori. Nothing in this world lasts. We should all strive to spend our limited time wisely.”

They finished their meal in silence.

 

-

 

When Sasori had graduated from the Academy, he was unfortunately the only one in his year to do so. Sunagakure customs allowed him to attempt the graduation exam earlier than his peers, at the expense of his own pride should he fail, and he had passed with flying colors, much to the dismay of the older students. This also meant that his team would consist of Genin at least three years older than him, and the prospect of having to earn his place in his team was neither unwelcomed nor anticipated. That would be no trouble. Just as the graduation exam had been no trouble.

At the ripe old age of seven, he stepped out of the school building holding a forehead protector with the Suna emblem engraved into the steel. His grandmother had given him a firm pat on the back and offered him a celebratory dessert. He refused. She laughed nervously, shaking her head.

“You’re right, you’re right. You’re not a child anymore, are you, Sasori? You’re a shinobi now. Then would you rather want dinner together? We can go anywhere you want.”

He refused again. He wanted to go back to his workshop. He wanted to prepare for his first mission, once he met his new assigned team. He wanted her to get lost.

(Chiyo stood alone at the gates of the Academy as Sasori returned to his empty home. Later that week, Ebizo brought him sweet dumplings and he shared one with his grand-uncle.)

 

-

 

“So you’re the legendary seven - year old that made it out,” the girl whistled lowly, narrowing her eyes as she leaned close to Sasori’s face. “God, I didn’t believe it when I heard it, but they really weren’t kidding. Hah, you plan to fight an enemy with all that baby fat left on your cheeks?”

“Pakura, that’s rude!” the boy laughed, slapping Sasori hard on the back.

The puppeteer bit back a wince.

“So, what’s your name, kid? I’m Pakura Shaku, and that’s Komushi over there,” the girl named Pakura motioned. Sasori regarded her, a tall stature made of a fiery personality and strange hair -- her roots were green and the tips, a weird orange. He vaguely entertained the idea of her fitting in a field of flowers, rather than the desert. _But,_ he thought to himself, _she’d have to sit in a field where the flowers are all warm - toned. What a disadvantage she’d have, caught dead in a field of blue or purple._

“My name is Sasori,” he said curtly, before walking past them both to sit by one of the wooden pillars of the training grounds. “Where’s the teacher?”

“Hey, aren’t you the grandson of Lady Chiyo?” the boy named Komushi gasped, blatantly ignoring his inquiry. “Suddenly, it makes sense that you’d be the youngest to graduate! Your uncle’s -- !!”

Pakura looked up in surprise.

“So that means … tsk, of course a member of his kin would be some sort of child prodigy…”

“Wow, you must be a puppet master, just like him!” Komushi exclaimed. “That’s amazing, has he taught you any cool moves?”

Not even five minutes had passed since he had met his new teammates and they were already giving him a headache. How were they so talkative this early in the morning? Sasori looked up at them.

“The teacher is late.”

His voice didn’t reach other of the two, who were now bickering about whether Komushi really had any shinobi familial background at all, and it was very clear that the boy was losing this fight when Sasori snapped up to attention, rolling behind the wooden training pillar and ducking. The other members of his team screeched as they slammed against the pillar in a sea of black sand that spilled past the edges, trickling at Sasori’s feet.

“Auuugh! What the hell--” Pakura screamed as the sand drew back to its source, leaving her and Komushi in a tangled mess on the dirt ground. Sasori squinted, standing back up as he looked over the stake.

A man stood at the edge of the training ground, enveloped by the offending sand, as if wearing a dark cloak. The rising sun cast a long, distorted shadow before them, further obscuring the stranger’s face. The grains danced in the wind, alive. Sasori gripped the scroll strapped to his waist.

“What’s going on?! Who’s th--”

Before Komushi could finish, the sand advanced again, tendrils of sparkling dark dust shooting at the trio, slamming into the ground, barely missing Pakura as she scrambled back onto her feet, grazing Komushi in the leg as it dug itself into the earth like an arrow. A third wave shot towards Sasori.

He bit his thumb, throwing the scroll into the air, sliding his blood through the painted seals as it unfurled, but the sand struck straight through the wooden warrior that had emerged from the smoke of summons. A breathy gasp escaped the puppeteer’s lips as he gripped the shattered limbs of his weapon with his chakra strings, throwing it down and using the momentum to fling himself into the air. As if anticipating his escape, the sand deftly redirected itself upwards, right at Sasori’s face. Gritting his teeth, he reattached his chakra strings onto Pakura, who had been interrupted mid - hand seal, and she screamed again as he reeled himself towards her. The momentum pulled her towards him, and he caught her in an embrace before they slammed back onto the ground in a heap of limbs and bruises.

“Hey!” she snapped, shoving him by the face. “You little brat, what the hell did you --”

But he paid her no attention as the sand once more redirected itself, descending upon them like a pointed blade. Desperately, he reached his strings out, attaching them onto the sand.

There was a tense moment of quiet, Pakura gasping as Sasori appeared to fight with the sand, a hand held up as if to hold it back by sheer will, and he struggled to keep it at bay. But it was a mere moment, and as quickly as he attached his strings, they broke apart and black sand _descended_.

And there was, once again, a moment of silence.

Sasori didn’t remember when exactly he had closed his eyes, but when he felt no bodily harm, he opened them to the figure of Komushi standing over Pakura and himself, his leg bleeding as he stood to their defense, shielding them both. The granules of black hovered over them all like a terrifying shadow, pointing at them menacingly, before slowly trickling down to the ground, shifting into a mere pile of dust and slithering back to its source.

The sun finally reached the sky, and the village was embraced by the morning light. The man stepped forward, out of the shadows.

“Komushi. Pakura. Sasori,” he called sternly, his arms crossed as he stood before them. “Was that really the best you could do?”

The trio groaned as they recollected themselves, dusting their clothes of black grains,careful to avoid their sore spots. Komushi fell back to the ground, wincing in pain as he gripped the wounded leg with a gloved hand. Sasori’s eyes hardened as he rubbed the sand out of them.

The black shadows that had assaulted them had receded into a dense, compact cube hovering over the stranger’s hand. The man stood tall, messy black hair strapped into topknot and slim, sharp eyes glancing at them all as if disappointed. He wore a standard Sunagakure flak jacket and a dark turtleneck. And upon his forehead was steel with the Sand’s emblem engraved upon it, for all the world to see.

“That was an atrocious display,” said the man, his short eyebrows furrowed in vexation.

“Hey! Who do you think you are?!” Pakura snarled, scooting forward to hold her wounded teammate.

“Sensei,” Sasori said blankly, realizing the situation right away.

“Sensei?!” she said, turning back to the man. “Wait, you’re--”

“You’re late,” Sasori interrupted, frowning.

Their teacher said nothing, golden eyes turning to the young puppeteer in an analytical gaze.

“That should be the least of your worries,” he said coldly.

“I don’t like to wait.”

Sasori met the man’s gaze with his own.

“That’s a shame,” he replied. “There’s nothing good about a shinobi who’s eager to rush to his own death.”

The puppeteer scoffed, breaking his gaze and turning away.

“My name is Sanou,” their teacher said. “And despite everything, it appears I will be your advisor. There’s a lot for all of you to improve upon and I recommend you answer to me swiftly and diligently in order for you all to succeed, as individuals, as a team, and therefore, as an asset to the village.”

Sanou narrowed his eyes.

“Pakura! You’re of the Shaku, aren’t you?”

“Ah! Yes, sir!” she responded quickly, thoroughly shocked into obedience.

“The Shaku family are renowned in Sunagakure for their Scorch - Release bloodline limit. It’s an ability that allowed you to graduate from the academy two years before the average student, and yet you displayed none of that talent when I ambushed you,” he scolded.

Pakura winced. “N-no, but I was just about to when Sasori --”

“Excuses,” he snapped, turning to Komushi. “And you. You’re from a family of civilians. Yet your chakra control is above average; it’s what got you graduated at your age with Pakura, but you too failed to display any of that impressive ability when it mattered. Furthermore, you show no aptitude for the battlefield, being the only one to get hit by my attacks, and your heroic attempt at defending your teammates was a foolish endeavour. Commendable, but foolish.”

Komushi, who was mostly preoccupied by his stinging leg, merely bit his lip and nodded. Finally, Sanou turned to Sasori.

“You’re Satsuki and Senri’s boy. Your uncle warned me about you.”

“Did he now?” he drawled sarcastically. “I’m sure he had nothing but positive things to say.”

Pakura snapped her head around, eyes widening, a choke of surprise caught in her throat at his uncharacteristic display of dry humor. She quickly turned it into a cough as Sanou’s eyes narrowed further.

“As I suspected. No matter how good you are in actual combat, none of that means anything if you can’t defeat me. I’ll grant you credit for anticipating my ambush and further avoiding getting hit, especially after I shattered your puppet. But you let your teammates take the hit so you could evade. You threw Pakura around like a rag doll so you wouldn’t get hurt. And you had the audacity to try and use the puppet jutsu on _my_ technique.”

Pakura shot him a glare at the revelation of how she had been used, her lips pressed into an unhappy line. Sasori paid her no attention.

“You are a puppeteer. By virtue of your medium, you specialize in mid to long-range attacks. In exchange, you lack the ability to defend yourself from close-combatants. What happens when you’re ambushed by close-range shinobi? What do you plan to do when you’re fighting all alone?”

Honey eyes met gold, and the Genin gazed into his teacher’s eyes, his expression entirely unreadable.

“I plan to win.”

Sanou clicked his tongue.

“Childish arrogance.”

Sasori said nothing.

“This was nothing short of a disappointment. If this is the best rookies that Sunagakure has to offer, this village is surely in a sorry state.”

Pakura’s face twisted in a withheld rage, but Sanou ignored her reaction, continuing coolly. With a twitch of a finger, he dispersed the cube of black sand into three small spears.

“You will have two further chances to remain on this team. You’ve already used one --”

A sand spear crumbled above Sanou’s hands, falling to his palm.

“Those who fail my assessment on all three tries will return to the Academy and start over from scratch.”

“That’s not fair!” Pakura cried, only to be silenced by a stern look from the Jonin.

“ _Fairness_ is not a word I recommend clinging to.”

“What are the requirements?” Sasori asked impatiently.

Sanou regarded him with a hint of displeasure.

“Impress me. We meet again tomorrow at dawn.”

Their teacher waved his hand, morphing the remaining two sticks into a geometric spear and hurling it onto the wooden pillar that Sasori had used to evade his initial assault. He gripped the remains into a dense cube of iron sand in his fist, turning away as he walked off the training grounds, leaving his battered team to pick themselves up from the remains of their defeat.

 

-

 

As it turned out, the following day was just as lost as the first. Komushi, whose leg was still bothering him, didn’t even manage to get through three minutes of Sanou’s attack before he tripped over himself and resorted to rolling around on the ground to evade any further spearheads from impaling him. Sasori paid him no mind, instead unfurling a line of kunai, held in air with chakra string, and sent them flying towards Sanou with a flick of the wrist. Unfortunately, Pakura had chosen that exact moment to attempt her Scorch Release attack, sending fist - sized fireballs in the Jonin’s direction. He jumped out of the way, and Sasori hissed in frustration as the flames singed his chakra strings, disintegrating his weapons to a liquid state that burned through the dirt ground.

“Sasori!” she yelled. “Stop getting in my way!”

“I could say the same for you!” he yelled back, digging into the pouch on his hip and grabbing a handful of senbon.

“Guys, I -- GUAH!!” Komushi screeched as he barely dodged a dense block of black sand.

It dropped like a weight and shattered the earth beneath, crumbling the foundation of the grounds. Sasori leapt into the air, only for Pakura to slam into him, as she had been caught by Sanou’s sand and thrown back to the ground. The two struggled to get back on their feet as the floor shook, stumbling over each other foolishly in their haste. Pakura hissed as the senbon in Sasori’s hands pierced her right forearm. Sanou released a flurry of hand seals.

“Earth Release!” he cried out, before pressing his palms against the ground. The three of them wailed as the ground quickly disintegrated into quicksand, dragging them deeper into the earth as they struggled.

Sasori reached out, yanking his hand out of the sinkhole and attaching his strings to the nearby wooden pillar in an effort to pull himself out. He only managed to release himself from the waist up before the pillar, too, fell over with the loss of stable ground, effectively slamming itself on top of Komushi’s head.

And as soon as the chaos had begun, it stopped. The ground stopped sinking, growing stiff and solid, with the trio still stuck shoulder - deep. Komushi groaned, looking dangerously dazed, while Pakura continued to struggle against the hard dirt. Sasori stayed still, glaring at Sanou, who had stepped forward to look down on his students.

He said nothing as he walked past them both, picking up the wooden pillar that was sunk halfway into the earth beside Komushi and tore it out of the dirt without a hitch. The jonin propped it upright in front of them all, back where it was supposed to be, and grabbed one of the two black sand spears he had dug into it the day before. It disintegrated into the black cube in his hands, and he gave them all a disappointing glare before walking away without another word.

Their second chance had been blown.

 

-

 

Sasori had attempted to leave after helping Pakura drop off their concussed teammate at the infirmary, but Pakura had suggested, with a hand that felt like a fiery brand on his shoulder, that he should stay. And given how she had melted the handlebars and shattered the glass after a single attempt at opening the hospital doors, he was inclined to sit tight and wait for Komushi’s status update.

His fingers itched; he wanted so badly to just go back home and continue working on fixing his destroyed puppet from the day before. They tapped idly on his knee as he and Pakura sat outside in the waiting room.

Pakura, on the other hand, was preoccupied by other concerns.

“Let me get one thing straight,” she said coldly, patting her forearm where a nurse had bandaged Sasori’s accidental stabbing. “I don’t like you.”

“That’s alright,” he said simply, a bit peeved to be interrupted from his thoughts.

“You’re a real pain, you know that?” Pakura sneered. “Komushi might like you, but don’t think can’t I see you for what you are.”

“And what am I?” Sasori said evenly looking straight ahead, continuing to tap his fingers on his knee. How long would something like this take? Just give him something and tell them he would be fine. Just let them go already. Were Suna medical practices that slow? This was frustrating.

He hated to wait.

“You don’t see me or Komushi as someone worth respecting. Not as shinobi, and certainly not as people. Kids like you are trouble in the end, no matter how good you are now.”

“You seem upset.”

“Hell yeah, I’m upset!” she snapped. “You didn’t even bother giving me or Komushi a heads up when you sensed the ambush the day before, you threw me around like one of your dolls just to evade, and if you haven’t noticed, we’re only here because you tried to escape on your own and beat Komushi over the head!”

“Then you two should hurry up and become people worth working with,” he drawled lazily. “Because right now, both of you are worth less than the puppets I use. At least they’re useful for something. You and Komushi are always just sitting around, either getting in my way or waiting to get hurt.”

“Bold words, coming from the kid who got knocked flat on his ass!” she spat. “He didn’t beat just me and Komushi, if you paid any attention. He beat _all_ of us, you included. All the dolls in the world couldn’t stop that sand manipulation jutsu.”

Sasori didn’t reply, his eyebrows furrowing in frustration as he recalled the past two quick defeats. They were too fast for his own liking, despite his constant impatience, and it had hurt to see how quickly his puppet had been taken down on the first day. The black sand had pierced through it like it was made of paper rather than wood. Furthermore, if he _had_ managed to salvage the puppet and use it in combat, Sasori imagined it wouldn’t have lasted for very long. Sanou’s technique wasn’t just sand, but something heavier, denser, something _magnetic,_ from the way his shuriken fell out of his pouches and stuck to the sand. No puppet joint would be able to handle that kind of technique. It was why he had opted to use the puppet jutsu on weapons rather than a proper marionette, but his efforts had still been in vain.

Pakura’s glare softened as she watched him realize his own weaknesses, but her stern scolding did not relent.

“Sensei likely won’t let us go on any missions until we prove we’re worth our salt. He’s probably going easy on us, which makes it worse that we can’t beat him at all. I don’t like you one bit, Sasori, but the least you could do is be cooperative. We only have one chance left.”

“Again, there was little you did that I could’ve cooperated with,” he said, a certain bite in his voice. “But I will work with you if you give me something to work with.”

She grit her teeth, turning away from him as if to calm herself down, when a nurse finally came to inform them that Komushi would be just fine. He wondered if the older boy would even be well enough to join them when they met Sanou again the next day.

 

-

 

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?” Pakura asked, poking at Komushi’s bandaged head.

He winced, batting her hand away.

“It’s not that big of a deal. The medics all said I’d be fine, I got medicine for any headaches.”

“They’re probably just pain - killers, rather than anything that would promote a recovery,” she pointed out. “But if you say so. Sasori, get over here. We should talk strategy today.”

The puppeteer narrowed his eyes as he walked over from where he had been standing, this time by a post near the edge of the training grounds. “It’s a little late for tactics, don’t you think?”

“Better late than never,” Pakura shrugged as Komushi slung his arm around Sasori’s neck, to his great displeasure. “Sensei arrived fifteen minutes after sunrise for the past two days, so he’ll probably be tardy again. In the meantime, we should talk up a game plan.”

The older boy nodded solemnly as he tapped Sasori’s shoulder.

“Here’s what I think. Pakura, you should go in close for the attack and Sasori could back you up from the rear! Since he’s a long-range fighter. I can distract him!”

“That’s stupid,” Sasori said dully, to both of their surprises. “First of all, we’ve lost the element of surprise by being expected here. Sanou-sensei likely purposefully shows up late so he can catch us in the open, and we can’t hide anywhere because then he’ll just assume we didn’t show up at all and it’ll reflect poorly on us. Furthermore, there’s no place to hide given this is an open training area in the middle of the desert. He was able to catch us by surprise the day before because the dark color of his sand fit with the dark backdrop of the village. Yesterday, he didn’t bother hiding before attacking, and we still lost. Given that we’re already aware of his ability to blend in with the dunes at night, we should expect either a concealment jutsu or a head - on attack. We can’t be certain he’ll start his ambush from the shadows or in a straightforward manner based solely on his performance yesterday -- he’s a Jonin, so he’ll do whatever we expect the least. So rather than blindly assuming he would attack head on and assigning positions based solely on our fighting style, we should adjust to suit our plan of offense.”

Komushi gave Sasori a long, blank stare before admitting dumbly, “I’ve never heard you say so many words all at once.”

“Yeah,” Pakura snorted. “No kidding. But the brat’s right. He’ll probably be expecting something like what you said, Komushi. So change of plans. Sasori, how many puppets do you have?”

They were surprised a second time when his eyes sharpened, a slow, ominous smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“Two.”

Pakura returned with a devilish grin of her own.

“Perfect.”

 

-

 

Sanou tapped his foot, his arms crossed as his team of Genin stared back at him with a renewed vigor in their eyes. He had struck first, leaping out of a hole in the ground, grabbing Sasori by the front of his shirt and sending him flying into another wooden pillar on the edge of the training ground. Pakura and Komushi immediately jumped up, rushing to his aid and catching him before his back could hit the wood, sliding together across the grounds as a single unit.

“Sensei,” Komushi called out solemnly, a hand in the pouch strapped to his waist. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Sanou - sensei,” Pakura repeated, her own hand at the pouch strapped to her thigh.

Sasori watched him from behind them both, honey eyes hard in concentration as he recovered, wiping the corners of his mouth with a cold fury. A quiet descended upon the training ground, the whistling wind the only sound that echoed in their ears.

“Good morning,” Sanou said at last, reaching out and opening his hand. The black sand, this time in the shape of a sphere, shook in his palm. “Let us proceed.”

The three of them tensed in preparation as the sphere rattled, wriggling ominously, bending out of shape as if something inside were trying to escape.

_“Impress me.”_

“Get out of the way!” Pakura cried in warning as the sand burst, crashing into the ground and spilling forth in heavy waves.

The three leapt into the air, but the sand advanced, gripping Komushi by the ankle, He yelped as Pakura grabbed him and spun him in the air, tearing him away and throwing him further into the sky as she descended into dark waves. It swallowed her whole, half of the sand dispersing to hold her down in place, as the other half advanced on Komushi and Sasori. Taking a leaf from Pakura’s book, Komushi grabbed Sasori by the front of his shirt and threw him further up, letting the momentum throw himself back into the sand. The older Genin both crashed to the ground, enveloped in Sanou’s sand, struggling, as Sasori fell to his feet further distance away, speedily avoiding the sand at any cost.

Sanou, whose face was always locked in a disapproving frown, creased in displeasure.

“Pakura!” Sasori called.

“On it!” she cried, and to his shock, a second Pakura burst from the ground the same way Sanou had, and immediately began a flurry of hand seals.

“That can’t --!”

Sanou turned his attention back to the Pakura and Komushi he had captured, only to find in his grasp two unfurnished puppets.

“Genjutsu--!” he realized, as Pakura raised her arms.

“Scorch Release!” she cried, sending a single intense ball of flame towards the marionettes, a hot wave of flaming wind forcing them all to look away.

Sanou immediately moved to draw back his sand, only to be caught in a chokehold by Komushi, who had emerged from the ground in the same manner behind him.

“I won’t let you!” he cried, before the Jonin grabbed him by the back of his shirt and threw him onto the ground.

It was too late, however, and the Scorch Release had incinerated his sand into glass-like lumps, the charred remains of Sasori’s puppets barely noticeable in the shining crystalline rocks that remained of the iron sand.

“Foolish!” Sanou called out, jumping back away from Komushi and raising his arms once more. The lumps began to rise, dense and dangerous, as he waved his hands.

“Sasori!” Komushi cried out, and on cue, the puppeteer unfurled two scrolls from his waist.

“Release!” Sasori ordered, and the glass crystals disappeared in a cloud of smoke, leaving behind a trio of Genin all low on chakra and a single Jonin with wide eyes and open mouth.

There was a pregnant pause, punctuated only by their panting, before Sanou burst into a shocking wave of laughter. Pakura and Komushi’s jaw dropped as their teacher doubled over, hands on his hips as he snorted, waving one hand as if to ask them to wait.

Sasori’s frown grew deeper.

“You’ve been bested,” he said loudly, visibly annoyed with his reaction.

“You kids --!” Sanou gasped, gripping himself by the stomach before taking a long breath and flicking his wrist.

Sasori let out a gasp of surprise as the scrolls in his hands wriggled out of his grasp, shaking on the ground as it fell. They stopped shaking before suddenly --

_Thwack!_

Black sand spikes shot out of the body of the paper lethally, breaking past the seal and spilling out in waves of dark metallic sand, quickly returning to Sanou’s side. A rattle echoed in Sasori’s ears, and from within the sand dropped the charred remains of the two unfurnished puppets he had used as bait. The scrolls lay in shredded ruins, broken and torn on the ground.

“No way!” Komushi cried out unhappily, jumping back to regroup with the other two members of his team.

“It is very much so,” Sanou called to him evenly, small traces of his earlier mirth present in his gaze. “That was a clever attempt, especially from a group of Genin. But unfortunately, a seal meant to hold puppets couldn’t possibly contain something with a chakra concentration as heavy as my Iron Sand.”

Sasori clicked his tongue in frustration, reaching back into his pouch to grab a kunai. They had only had time to come up with this strategy; there was no Plan B. His mind raced, observing the terrain, his teacher, the state of his teammates, counting the arsenal of weapons he had left --

“Unfortunately,” Sanou continued. “It seems like this is where we’ll have to end for today.”

“What?!” Pakura cried as their teacher walked leisurely over to the wooden pillar where a single shard of black sand still lay dug into the body. “We’re not done here!”

“No, we’re finished,” Sasori snapped, retracting his hand from his pouch and letting it sit on his side. “We’ve got nothing left. Call it as it is, Pakura.”

“No we’re not!” she snapped back. “I’ve still got plenty of chakra left in me!”

“I’m pretty beat,” Komushi groaned in admission. “Genjutsu isn’t an easy feat, you know!”

“Sasori’s right,” Sanou said, reaching for the black spear. “This is it. You three are done.”

“No way…” Pakura moaned in frustration. “We lost?! It’s over?!”

“AAAAUGGGHH, Mom’s gonna KILL me when she finds out I have to go back to the Academy!” Komushi yelled, holding his head in his hands.

“Luckily, that won’t be the case for any of you,” their teacher said breezily, taking out the spear. He held it up for the three of them to see. “Because you all passed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of quick notes!
> 
> \- In a creative twist, Pakura's family name is Shaku, as in Shakuton (Scorch Release). Sanou (Third King) is the name I gave the Third Kazekage in another amazing feat of creative genius. Suna canonically doesn't have clans, but Pakura's Scorch Release is listed as a bloodline limit (though I don't think nature affinities are as family - based as optical based bloodline limits like the Sharingan) and I just wanted her to be from a family that's famous for it. It's what she Deserves!
> 
> \- Konoha seems to have a lot of Hokage who are related to each other and Suna is implied to use the title of Kazekage as a sort of hereditary position, which will become a point of contention later on. Meaning I'm going to establish Sasori as someone with important familial history in the political and artistic sphere of the village. The same goes for Rasa (the Yondaime), Karura, and Yashamaru, who will appear later on!
> 
> I'm really not a writer so I'm trying my hardest! Thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

There was a clatter of plates and chopsticks around the table as Komushi waved his arms, a grin stretched from ear to ear, knocking over the mayonnaise bottle by accident as he spoke. Sasori wordlessly propped it back up.

“And then! And then there was like --” he made an exaggerated noise, his fingers fluttering in the air. “It was SO huge like I’ve never seen Pakura use such a big jutsu before! And then Sasori was like, BUH-BOOM! And there was all this smoke, and--”

“Komushi, you’re just confusing her,” Pakura interrupted, though she couldn’t help the smile on her face. “It wasn’t all that great. We still lost.”

“You lost?” Komushi’s mother asked with a frown. “But you passed, didn’t you?”

“They aren’t the same thing, mom!” he explained with another wave of his hand.

The officially formed team found themselves at an okonomiyaki shop run by Komushi’s mother in the center of town, a dingy but highly popular restaurant in Suna. Sasori had only been there once, and that was with his parents when he was five. He had thought the octopus was icky to eat and made his father make him one made solely of bacon and shrimp.

It would’ve been nostalgic, if that had remained a good memory.

Komushi had explained to his mother how he had succeeded in becoming a proper genin, with the blessings of their teacher, and in her pride, she had closed the restaurant for the night to treat Pakura and Sasori to dinner. The emptiness of the place was barely noticeable, overshadowed by the cheers and laughter around their single table. His mother had invited Sanou as well, but he had politely declined the invitation, having more important things to do as a jonin.

“We lost, but Sensei said that we still showed signs of improvement from our first attempt! ‘Cause we tried to beat him using teamwork instead of just going after him ourselves! It was so cool, I got him in a headlock! I used this genjutsu -- that’s an illusionary jutsu, you use it to confuse your opponent into thinking something’s there when it’s not -- and I used it on Sasori’s puppets so it would look like us, so then when Sanou-sensei tried to grab us with his sand, he actually caught the puppets!”

Komushi’s mother nodded, though all of this was clearly over her civilian head, but Pakura waved her hand dismissively. Sasori just focused on making his dinner.

“Ok yeah, the genjutsu was impressive -- Genin usually shouldn’t be that good at chakra control like you, but let’s not forget my Scorch Release! I really thought I was gonna die after casting that one, I’ve never used one so big before. When he picked his sand right back up after all our efforts, I really thought that was the end!”

“Hey, give me some credit! It was really hard casting one on sensei, he’s super perceptive!”

“How’d you even manage that? You were underground, you couldn’t have made eye contact.”

Komushi chuckled knowingly, causing Pakura to give him another hard nudge with the shoulder. “It was -- ow! It was sound! I popped out the ground and carried my voice across the field from behind him before he could notice--”

“He definitely noticed,” Sasori cut in, scooping up his okonomiyaki and putting it on his plate. “I saw him twitch when you greeted him good morning.”

“Huh?”

His tablemates turned to him, surprised once more that he had decided to join the conversation at all, and watched as he licked his fingers where the brown sauce had stained.

“You came up with the plan, didn’t you Sasori?” Pakura smirked. “Then why don’t you do the honors, shrimp?”

He delicately ignored her last jab, instead choosing to sprinkle his food with bonito flakes. Sasori briefly entertained the idea of just ignoring them, knowing damn well that they didn’t need a refresher on something that had happened just this morning, but Komushi’s mother was staring at him with expectant eyes, and he didn’t want to be rude to the person feeding him, no matter how ignorant she seemed to be.

“The idea was to use my puppets as bait in order to draw Sanou-sensei’s sand into one place. He would just spread his attack around if we jumped around everywhere, so we set the illusion that we were running around as a unit. When he caught the fake Pakura and Komushi, Pakura appeared from the earth using a burrowing technique and incinerated the sand so that it lumped together as one weapon, rather than being fluid grains that could escape our trap. Because my puppets were caught in that fire, neither Pakura nor Komushi were caught in the Scorch-Release technique. While Komushi stopped sensei from drawing back the glassified sand, I sealed it alongside the puppet parts stuck inside it, in my puppets’ designated scrolls.”

He said all this in one breath and blew on the hot food before taking a bite. Komushi’s mother laughed nervously, very visibly out of her element even with his basic explanation.

“That’s very clever of you, Sasori!” she said encouragingly, passing him some more batter. “I’m just lucky that smart and talented shinobi like you and Pakura are on my helpless Komushi’s team!”

The kunoichi snorted, choking on her bite of food and dropping her chopsticks to hack it out as Komushi whined about being babied.

“Moooom!” he cried as Pakura chugged down a glass of water. “I’m not a kid anymore! I’m a fully fledged shinobi!”

Sasori frowned deeply, picking at the small pancake with his metal chopsticks, breaking it apart with one hand. Despite his apparent  _ clever _ plan, it hadn’t been enough. He’d no idea that sealing scrolls used for his puppets were nowhere near the level necessary to contain something like Sanou’s sand. His grandmother had taught him that there were different seals for certain, but he had been under the grievous misconception that the differences were based on objects, rather than chakra levels. More than once had he accidentally picked up dirt and grit from practice with his marionettes and brought it home with him when he unsealed it on his workshop table to repair. It was a testament to his level that he assumed that something similar would happen with his teacher’s ultimate weapon.

A small shrimp poked out of the side of his broken - up okonomiyaki and he picked it off his plate, chewing it slowly.

He wouldn’t ever delude himself into believing that he was the level of a Jonin, but it was disappointing at the very least to know exactly  _ how _ powerless he really was in the grand scheme of things. A prodigy in the Academy perhaps, but he was still a small insect in a brutal desert outside of it. Sanou hadn’t even really  _ tried _ . 

“Sasori, are you full?” called Komushi’s mother from the other end of the table, holding up another large okonomiyaki. “Come now, you’ve barely eaten a thing! I’ve made another for you, hurry and help yourself!”

He shook his head, but she insisted, piling his plate with another helping of hot food. Pakura watched him intently, with knowing eyes.

 

-

 

“Urgh… ok guys, I know I said all that about my genjutsu earlier, but I’ve been thinking … maybe it isn’t really my style,” Komushi said suddenly, after he unpacked his bag and took a long chug of water. Sasori looked up, shaken back to reality from his thoughts by his words.

So far, their first C-rank mission had been nothing short of dead silence. It had been a couple of weeks since their initiation assessment and despite Sanou’s initial show of good humor by the end of that test, the team had quickly come to realize that that burst of laughter had been extremely uncharacteristic of their sensei. He was a strict and severe man, whose narrow eyebrows were always furrowed in something that looked like disapproval no matter what (a trait that was intensely discouraging to Pakura, unimportant to Sasori, and did little to deter the ever-optimistic Komushi). The team had completed a total of three D-ranked missions thus far, and though Pakura complained about the seemingly unchallenging tasks they took on, a single stern scolding from Sanou was all it took to shut her up. Komushi and Sasori were patient on the matter, however, though Sasori privately wished they could hurry up and do something that actually resulted in some sort of combat. The only time he had needed to even use his chakra was when he caught Komushi from falling off a building roof with his strings, and then subsequently hung him upside down in the air to the latter’s dismay. Pakura had been annoyed with him for teasing their teammate like that for a good couple of days, but it had been worth the trouble, because he was so desperately  _ bored _ .

And there was the matter of their teacher. Komushi had one day admitted to the team, during one of their group dinners (insisted upon by Komushi’s mother who was getting harder to refuse), that he felt sorry that their brilliant sensei was forced to do silly entry-level work on their behalf.  _ Sorry _ was not the word Sasori would’ve used to describe how he felt, but he, too, admitted that it was wasteful to make someone of Sanou’s level complete D-rank missions, traditions be damned. But this feeling would not last for long, because the next night, Sanou came knocking on their doors with welcomed news.

Sasori had been deep into his own little world, repairing a personal project of his, when he answered. His teacher raised a brow as the younger shinobi welcomed him in.

“I should be going after this, to deliver the details to Pakura and Komushi,” he said curtly, wasting no time. “But I do recommend keeping some lights on. I would’ve thought you were asleep had that one window not been lit.”

He pointed to the second floor window, where his workshop was. Where his parents’ room used to be. Sasori gave him a blank stare.

“It’s a waste of energy to light an empty house,” he said softly. “What can I help you with, sensei?”

If his words struck anything with Sanou, he didn’t show it. The jonin handed him a scroll.

“There’s been a call for a mass capture of a band of thieves on the border between the Wind and Rivers. They recently attempted an attack on the Wind daimyo’s favored vassal during a friendly get-together with a representative from the River Country, and neither are too pleased. So they want it taken care of immediately.”

Sasori rolled open the scroll, scanning it quickly. He’d read over the details later more carefully after Sanou left.

“A C-rank mission,” he read aloud after a pause. “The thieves are gaining notoriety, it appears. They usually harass civilians in the Land of Rivers. Why have they crossed borders?”

“That’s what we’re meant to find out when we capture them,” explained Sanou. “Based on their intentions, we’re to eliminate them or to send them back to the River Country for questioning. We leave first thing in the morning.”

“Very well,” Sasori replied, rolling it back up. “If that’s all, goodnight sensei.”

 

And now, against all expectations, Sasori found himself walking down a grassy path into a forest, where the desert receded into life, and the brink of the Wind Country slowly merged into something more like the River Country. Their teacher stopped them at the front of the trees, offering a half hour of reprieve in the branches before they would return to their march, a half hour that his students gladly welcomed.

Pakura, truthfully, for all her complaining, was not entirely certain she was ready for a C-rank mission of any sort, a fear she expressed after a long inner struggle, during the same dinner where Komushi and Sasori explained how they regretted wasting Sanou’s skills and time. Komushi, without hesitation, had launched into a spiel about how great and talented she was.

She took off her goggles, the ones she and her team had been wearing while they blitzed through the desert, and stuffed them in her bag. Her feet were sore from constant chakra use; the uneven and sinking terrain of their homeland was not easy to trek across. The exhaustion had rendered their usual cheer and talk (mostly from a certain optimistic member of their team) into dead silence.

Yes, Pakura had expected support from Komushi. But she hadn’t expected the disrespectful level of disinterest from Sasori.

_ “Certainly there are other members of your kin who utilize the Scorch Release better than you.” _

She took a huge chug of water.

“What do you mean?” she finally answered Komushi, gasping as she crumpled the waterskin up and stuffed it back in her pack. “By the way, do you have any soldier pills? I can’t find mine, I’m kinda running low and I might need them for later, in a pinch.”

The boy dug his hand into the pouch by his waist and handed her three wrapped in tissue paper. “Here, I’ve got plenty. But I mean like, I’m not actually that good at genjutsu, don’t you think?”

“Huh? I mean, you’ve got the second best chakra control in our team,” she said encouragingly. Second best, because the finely tuned control needed for chakra strings was a struggle, but possibility for Komushi, and nothing short of impossible for Pakura, whose prior attempts at the puppet jutsu had resulted in her chakra blowing up in her face.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Sanou said, joining their conversation and taking off his own goggles. He sat crossed - legged on a particularly large branch. “Your control  _ is _ impressive, and it’s a necessary trait for genjutsu, but there’s a certain subtlety also required for it to work. You barely managed during that first attempt with me.”

Komushi nodded as he took off his shoes, rubbing his sore feet. “Yeah, Sasori did say you noticed it. But that’s what I was thinking too. I mean, I’m sure I could get better if I tried, but I’d like to be more helpful than in just making illusions.”

“What were you thinking of?” Pakura asked. “Have you figured out what chakra nature you have?”

“Erm, no, not yet. But I was thinking of going into medical ninjutsu,” he expressed excitedly. “I already know about some herbs and plants, since my mom likes to raise them. I’m not super good at actual fighting on the battlefield, but wouldn’t I be useful if I could patch up your wounds?”

Sanou hummed.

“Field medics are usually in the fray no matter what, so you  _ do _ have to improve your battlefield skills, but that might actually be a much better fit for you. There  _ is  _ a tradition for every team to have at least one medic. If you hadn’t suggested yourself, I likely would’ve appointed that duty to Sasori.”

All eyes turned to the puppeteer, whose mouth narrowed in displeasure at the prospect of having to play nurse.

“I’m not a healer,” he said sternly.

“Ok, but you have to admit, if Komushi didn’t want the position so bad, you’d be a pretty good fit,” Pakura shrugged. “You fight mid - to - long range, away from the danger, your chakra control’s the best of us, and you’re always mixing up poisons, aren’t you? Can’t you do the same with medicine?”

“I could not,” he said snappishly.

“Ugh, you’ve got such a bad attitude,” the girl clicked her tongue. “Whatever, Komushi said he’d do it anyway. God forbid  _ you _ ever be a good guy.”

“Hey, don’t fight guys,” the genin in question laughed nervously. “It would be no good to make Sasori do it if he didn’t want to. Besides, I’ve already started talking to Lady Chiyo about training with her.”

“Woah!” Pakura gasped, snapping her attention to him. “Lady Chiyo?! You’ve got some nerve!”

“She’s notoriously difficult to have as a teacher,” Sanou agreed delicately. “Lady Chiyo doesn’t like to take students. She’s very impatient.”

“I guess that’s a hereditary thing, huh?” she rolled her eyes. Sasori said nothing.

“Well, Sasori’s really good at the puppet technique and he learned it from her, right? So maybe I’ll be just as good at medical ninjutsu if I learn under her!” Komushi said brightly, swinging his legs. “She’s the best medic in our village!”

“Medical ninjutsu is not so simple,” Sasori warned, sipping from his own waterskin. “It requires a detailed understanding of Yin and Yang Release. You barely know what nature affinity you have as it is.”

“Well then, we have time, don’t we? Why don’t we test it out for ourselves?” Sanou said goodnaturedly, rummaging through his own pack and digging out three tiny sheets of paper.

The three genin drew closer, joining their teacher on the same branch.

“What, is that origami paper?” Pakura asked, receiving one. “What can we do with something like that?”

“This.”

Sanou took a fourth piece of paper out and held it between two fingers. Quick as the eye could see, the paper sliced into two. Komushi gasped.

“It’s chakra paper,” the jonin explained. “It’s used to determine your main nature affinity. My main one is Wind. Of course, as you grow stronger, it’s usual for most people to have more than one. Our own Pakura here also uses two, Fire and Wind, to create Scorch.”

Pakura brightened up visibly at her teacher’s acknowledgement of her innate talent and pushed a bit of her chakra into the paper. To no one’s surprise, it ignited, falling to their feet in a flurry of ashes.

“There’s that famous Scorch,” Komushi said aloud, wide-eyed in interest.

“No, not exactly,” Sanou corrected. “Pakura, you may not realize, but your main affinity is Fire. You just happen to be naturally gifted with the ability to mix it with your secondary affinity, Wind. Due to your bloodline limit, you don’t actually have to master Fire or Wind to use Scorch; it just happens to comes naturally to you. Others who might want to imitate you would have to master Fire and Wind, and then manually figure out the best combination of these two natures to create Scorch through a long and grueling training process. But at the end of the day, your main affinity, regardless of any bloodline limits, will always be one of the main five: Fire, Water, Earth, Lightning, and Wind.”

Sasori wordlessly channeled his chakra while Pakura beamed, and his paper also split into two, just as his sensei’s had.

“Wind affinity,” Sanou mused. It’s very common among Suna-nin. What about you, Komushi?”

To everyone’s shock, Komushi’s own paper had wrinkled up suddenly, bunching where his fingers had pressed against the sheet, and he dropped it in surprise.

“What was that?!” he cried.

“Lightning? That’s rare in Suna,” Pakura said aloud, mildly impressed. “Hey, maybe you’re something special after all.”

“Oh man, I hope so!” he laughed, scratching the back of his head. “You and Sasori are already famous in our year, it’s hard keeping up!”

“We should head out now,” the genin in question said suddenly, interrupting him. “We’ve rested for long enough, and any later the sun might set while we’re trying to get there.”

“Eh…” Komushi winced, wondering if he had somehow offended his teammate as Sasori stood back up, repacking his waterskin. Komushi looked to Pakura, who met his eyes and just shrugged. They’d talk about it later. 

Sanou narrowed his eyes slightly as he watched the strangely developing dichotomy of his team, but nodded, and the group regathered their belongings, taking their last sips of water before leaping through the trees.

 

-

 

The land in this area was starkly different from the landscape they were used to in Sunagakure. The lush trees provided a shade that made it easier to run for longer, the lack of grit in the air gave them no reason to wear goggles, and the steady terrain of wood and hard earth quickened their pace. By the time they had reached the outpost town that was supposedly besieged by bandits, they found themselves feeling perfectly fine and more than ready for combat.

Given their early arrival, Pakura suggested a bit of reconnaissance before dismantling the thieves’ den, seconded by Sasori. The look she gave him was subtle, a gaze that was clearly perturbed by the idea of Sasori ever agreeing with her on any matter, but Sanou obliged.

The outpost town, a small old little residence made of rickety houses and a single dirt path that carved through the neighborhood, was unimpressive at the very least, especially to children who grew up in one of the greater shinobi villages, and its helplessness in the face of turmoil had made it an easy victim to a band of thieves that had crossed over from the Land of Rivers. The town was quite literally on the edge of the Wind Country’s borders -- a mere kilometer away was where the River Country began. If any of the thieves crossed into the neighboring territory and the Suna-nin were caught trying to start a fight within the land, the Wind daimyo might use it as an excuse to cut Sunagakure off entirely.

“Wait,” Komushi interrupted Sanou’s explanation, pointing at the scroll they were all reading. “Why would the Wind daimyo punish our village when his vassal’s friend from the River Country was the one who requested this mission anyway?”

“Because the Wind daimyo is a cowardly fool,” Sasori drawled lazily, earning a slap on the head from Pakura.

“Can’t you be a little more delicate?” she scolded as he rubbed the back of his scalp. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“Unfortunately, our country’s daimyo has been trying to earn the favor of the Fire Country’s daimyo. The Land of Rivers is sandwiched right between our two nations, and he doesn’t want to risk anything that might pose as an insult to the Fire Country,” Sanou continued. “So if we do lose a thief or two and you intend to cross into the River Country to catch them, do take care to not get caught.”

“Oh … so it’s a political matter. I dunno… shouldn’t the mission be ranked higher then?”

“It’s just a bunch of thieves, they aren’t shinobi or even samurai,” Pakura said. “Even us genin should be able to handle it. It’s not a matter of intense national importance.”

“It sure feels that way,” Komushi pouted.

“Then don’t worry about the political reasons,” Sasori said impatiently. “Even if we do get caught, there’s no guarantee that the Fire daimyo will find offense in our involvement in an affair that doesn’t even involve the Fire Country. It’s just that we have to assume that they’re  _ that  _ petty as a precaution.”

“Hm … well, when you put it that way…”

The jonin continued, pointing at a spot on the scroll’s painted map.

“The town is incredibly small, a mere neighborhood with a single food market. Its economy is sustained through locally produced goods that is exported to Suna, particularly its grains and fish, and further supported by the travelers who eat and lodge there when they come into the Wind Country through the River Country. The thieves have taken over the town so they have eyes everywhere, but their main base is located to the west, here in a cave.”

“If we plan to wrangle them up all at once, we should figure out a way for them to all be in one place,” Pakura pointed out. “If we pick them off one by one as they appear in the town, they might realize something’s up and retreat back to the River Country.”

“Yes, and it would be a pain to have to keep them restrained while we try and collect the rest as we go, so the best strategy would be to capture them all at once,” her teacher nodded. “Reports say their numbers are small, only nine or ten, but they may have grown in membership since. Our recon mission is to count how many there are, what their usual schedule is like, and figure it out from there. Tomorrow night, we strike. So tonight we will observe, and then tomorrow morning, return here to solidify our plan of attack.”

 

-

 

It was impossible for any one of them to walk freely into town without drawing suspicion. They were visibly dressed as shinobi, evidenced by their choice of clothing and the pouches strapped to their waists and legs, and no amount of effort to hide their forehead protectors would change that. Pakura went ahead with Sanou to check out the thieves’ base while Sasori and Komushi sat on shadowed rooftops of the outpost, east of where the sun was beginning to set. The town bathed in an orange hue, deep crimson lights streaking rooftops where the light hit the tile, and if not for the suffocating atmosphere of the thieves’ presence, Komushi imagined that it would’ve been quite beautiful. A windchime jingled gently against the breeze, almost comfortingly. One of Sasori’s puppets, wearing the disguise of a townsperson, walked around the village, to gather recorded footage for later observation.

“Hey, Sasori,” Komushi began slowly as they both kneeled over the edges of the tiled ridge. “I’ve been wondering for a while, but do you not like Pakura?”

Sasori did not reply, his eyes trained on the few wandering thieves whose identities as criminals was made clear through the weapons they carried as they stood guard around houses. Komushi, however, was not deterred by his usual silence, instead carrying on in a low whisper.

“I mean, Pakura and I hang out together all the time, but you won’t join us. And I visit you sometimes at your house but you never chase me out, so I was just thinking that maybe … I know Pakura isn’t always super gentle, but she’s really sweet and kind, and she’s someone you can count on, so --”

“Komushi,” Sasori interrupted. “Your spiel on your undying devotion to Pakura is well intentioned, but ultimately meaningless right now. You can express this sentiment to her later when we’ve completed the mission. Besides that...”

He turned and gave him a pointed look.

“Your radio’s on. Hearing you twice is making me dizzy.”

Burning brighter than Sasori’s hair, Komushi turned a deep red as Pakura coughed through the earpiece, making her presence known.

“S-sorry! I didn’t mean -- that wasn’t like, a --”

Sasori reached over, brushing his cheek as he switched the earpiece off.

“Be quiet, or we’ll get caught,” he whispered sternly before turning back to his puppet. “My opinion on Pakura hardly matters anyway. Just concentrate on what’s important.”

“Your opinion’s important!” he insisted. “It impacts our teamwork!”

There was a pregnant pause, the sheer, thin chakra threads in the air glistening as the last vestiges of the dying sun set, and a darkness descended upon them all. Sasori’s puppet peeked inside a lit pub through a window, across the street from where they sat. Flicking his fingers, he made his puppet’s spin slowly, as if observing the area, before finally withdrawing. After a minute or two, he sighed.

“She’s the one with a problem with me, not the other way around.”

“That’s not true. You’re really dismissive of her,” Komushi said in a low, hurt tone. “ She was really upset when you were mean to her after she said she was nervous about this mission. I hate to see you guys fight. We’re a team. We should get along.”

The town was mostly deserted now, save for a couple of thieves on guard around the edges of the area. The larger groups had now gathered in the makeshift bars that, judging by what Sasori knew of the area, had been made out of the deserted homes of the original residents. He wondered where the civilians were.

“I don’t want to be talking about this right now, Komushi,” Sasori said, opening a compartment in his puppet’s head and taking out a small camera. “Let’s go check out how many guards are on the outskirts and meet up with Sensei and Pakura. We might not have to wait for the next night to strike; there’s only five people in there. I counted three others who could be wandering the town borders right now, if they haven’t gone back to the cave.”

_ “Speaking of, the cave is tiny,” _ Pakura reported through his earpiece.  _ “There’s only five people here too. For some reason, there’s not a lot of supplies here. It looks more like a hangout than a thieves’ den.” _

“Affirmative. So there’s definitely more than the reported nine or ten. You should turn your radio back on,” Sasori suggested to his partner as he closed the compartment on his puppet’s head. “Let’s focus on the task at hand.”

Komushi’s eyebrows furrowed, but he nodded sharply as he did so, and the two stealthily leapt across the rooftops to survey the remaining area. A nagging feeling bothered him as they snuck around, his concentration focused on the oddly placed boulders that were scattered around town. The windchimes rang gently in the breeze.

“Hey, Sasori,” he called to him. “Those stones are kinda --”

“Not now,” Sasori hissed, as they landed on top of a particularly old looking house with a hay-lined roof on the eastern edge of the outpost. He was focused on a group of three thieves sitting against a rock, who were all talking among themselves about their supposedly powerful leader.

“But Sa--” Komushi yelped when the hay gave out under him, his foot sinking into roof and sending him crashing down through the house.

The younger boy immediately whipped around, rushing over to look over the hole where his teammate had fallen straight through.

“Hey!” he cried out, leaping down into the mess of splintered rotting wood and the clay of the fireplace that Komushi had fallen upon, digging through the disaster until he found him, groaning in pain at his sudden slip. “You idiot! Get up!”

“Who’s there?!” called the guarding bandits, the sound of their shoes clicking against the wooden floor of the residence.

Sasori clicked his tongue, his face twisted up in frustration as he yanked Komushi up by the arm.

“Shinobi!” a bandit warned aloud, his comrades circling them, stolen blades and kunais in their fists.

Quick as a whip, Sasori flicked his wrist, attaching his chakra threads onto the sturdier parts of the roof and reeling himself back up, Komushi in his other arm. The bandits sprawled to grab them, only to crash into each other as he lifted them back onto the rooftop, the smaller boy straining for a solid grip on his decidedly heavier partner. They were given only a moment of reprieve, however, before other bandits came climbing up the pillars after them.

To Sasori’s horror, the number of enemies had more than tripled. He snapped his head around to where he had been spying from before, only to find that the boulders that the three guards had been sitting against had disappeared, a large hole with a proper staircase built in it instead taking its place. Thieves of all different sorts crawled out like ants by the dozens.

“Sensei!” he cried out, a finger pressed against the nape of his neck where the mic of his radio lay. “We’ve been compromised! It’s not a den, it’s an underground network!”

_ “Tunnels!” _ Pakura gasped though his earpiece.  _ “They’re hiding their supplies in there too!” _

_ “How many are there?” _ Sanou demanded, a sense of urgency in his voice.

“Twenty? Thirty? Maybe m--”

His voice was cut off as he blocked an attack; the bandit that had managed to climb onto the roof attempted to strike him with a kunai. Twisting his torso, Sasori deflected it with a kunai of his own and spun into a kick, sending the assailant face-first back to the ground. The hay rooftop sunk slowly beneath his feet and he leapt back.

“It was genjutsu!” Komushi yelled through the clash of steel, fending off another thief. “The windchimes! They’re all over town! The boulders were just an illusion!”

“Get out of my way!” Sasori snarled, jamming his weapon into the opponent’s throat, his palm pressed against the back of the kunai. He let go and kicked her aside, not even bothering to watch the body drop onto its comrades. 

The two fought their way through to the edge of the roof, managing onto another roof with a sturdier surface, panting as their backs pressed against one another.

“They shouldn’t know genjutsu,” Sasori heaved, his hands heavy with the scrolls he quickly procured from his waist. “They’re not shinobi!”

_ “Komushi! Sasori! Cover each other, we’re on our way!” _ Pakura barked into the radio.

_ “Escape and meet us halfway if you can. Give us five minutes to get to town,” _ Sanou said with equal intensity.  _ “You can last that long, you’re my students!” _

“Right!” Komushi replied, invigorated by his teacher’s will. “Sasori, let’s get out of here!”

“The mission.”

“What?”

Sasori’s eyes had hardened, glassy with something cold and unyielding.

“This is meaningless unless we complete our mission.”

“We can’t capture them now! We have to escape!” Komushi cried.

He unraveled his scrolls, and from his blood burst forth two battle puppets, deadly and dangerous, its faces carved in a terrifying likeness of humans, made horrific by its grotesque bodily additions. 

“All of them would be ideal. But one prisoner is enough.”

“Sasori!”

Komushi screamed as the marionettes rattled, soaring through the air and descending upon its victims like beasts. The smaller one flew upward, opening its mouth and unleashing a hailstorm of senbon needles, the vicious glint of something violet and venomous illuminating against the steel. The bandits fell like flies, crashing into one another. The larger puppet shot down to ankle level, revealing a monstrous array of blades from its sleeves, and tore through the crowd like paper, shredding their legs and sending them sprawling.

Komushi grabbed Sasori by the arm, shaking him.

“Stop it! You’re going to kill them all!”

The force of his pull, yanked his chakra strings the wrong way, sending the larger puppet crashing into a nearby house. Snarling, Sasori pushed back harder, knocking Komushi aside.

“Shut up!” the puppetmaster sneered, recovering his marionette. “I’m going to draw him out!”

The night howled with the cries of Sasori’s victims, the dense smell of iron suffocating them both, and Komushi sprawled back to his feet, grabbing the younger genin into a headlock.

“That’s enough! They’re not even fighting anymore!”

“Get off me, you idiot!”

The puppets dropped onto the ground as Sasori’s concentration broke, his chakra strings snapping as wood clattered against the dirt ground, softened only by the bodies that lay below. Komushi and Sasori struggled against each other, and the younger jammed his elbow into the older’s face, forcing Komushi to release him, spouting a bleeding nose.

_ “Sasori! Komushi! What in the world are you two doing?!” _ Sanou snapped in their ears.  _ “This is no time to fight among each other!” _

He opened his mouth, but before Komushi could answer, he was silenced by the gentle grip of a hand on his shoulder. He froze where he stood, daring not to turn around and face the stranger. His eyes instead stuck on Sasori, whose expression grew  _ chilling _ as he stared at the newcomer.

_ “Hey! Komushi! Sasori!” _ Pakura yelled, the radio cracking with the volume of her voice.  _ “What’s happening?!” _

“I’ve drawn  _ her  _ out,” Sasori reported back coldly, tense as he drew his puppets back to his side. “The leader of the thieves.”

A windchime rattled once more, but to the two shinobi who had already seen through the genjutsu, it had no effect.

“So it was a mere pair of kids that destroyed my efforts so quickly, was it?” a soft, cool voice spoke from behind the older genin. “I suppose that’s just a testament to my poor choice in subordinates.”

“That’s rich, coming from a little girl like you.”

She snorted, waving her other hand. The young kunoichi could not be any more than a couple of years older than Sasori, her face soft with youth and eyes frigid with malice.

“I think we both know that age has no bearing in our industry,” she said offhandedly, in the same manner one would use to talk about the weather, her gaze fixed upon the puppeteer’s forehead protector. “But goodness! Suna-nin? Oh man, did I really upset the Wind Country that much just by being here? I’ve no business with Sunagakure; I’d hate to make an enemy of such a formidable village.”

“Then yield,” Sasori ordered.

“Now I’m afraid I can’t do  _ that… _ ” she hummed. “Let’s see … I’ve got your friend here, and you’re all the way over there…”

Thin, lithe fingers pressed against Komushi’s head, straightened against the top of his skull, and she mockingly observed it. Sasori did not react.

“Puppet boy, you may have slaughtered my subordinates, but don’t get too proud. They were lowly bandits. You may as well have killed civilians holding pitchforks,” she drawled, tapping her fingers menacingly. “But they  _ were  _ my subordinates. Maybe I should pay you back for undoing all my hard work thus far.”

“It must be difficult being a missing-nin from such an obscure, unimportant village,” Sasori replied in equal disdain. “No one pays you any attention unless you kick up a fuss using weaker men of lower stature.”

Komushi gulped, confusion and fear locking him in place.

The girl snarled, baring her fangs as she dug her nails into Komushi’s scalp.

“Then you’ll see just what  _ I alone _ can do!”

With a deadly grip, she moved to snap his neck, and the boy barely had time to scream before being torn from her grasp by a mass of black sand. A high - pitched screech echoed through his ears and he felt himself crashing into another pair of arms.

“Komushi!” Pakura cried, holding him tightly. “Are you alright?!”

“You’re here!” he gasped, relief flooding his whole being, fingers numb with adrenaline. “Thank goodness! Then Sensei’s also --”

He looked up to the roof, where two figures cast a heavy, distorted shadow through the moonlight -- Sanou, and his Iron Sand engulfing the young missing-nin in an unyielding grip, with Sasori, standing opposite of him with his puppets hovering over their captive.

“Ameyuki of Tanigakure,” Sanou spoke, his deep voice booming menacingly. “You will yield.”

Before she could fight back with whatever technique she had at the ready, she flinched, freezing up as Sasori pierced her throat with a needle, injecting something into her neck. Sanou’s eyes widened as she collapsed, growing limp in the Iron Sand’s grasp.

“Sasori, you --!”

“She’s not dead,” he interrupted. “That would be detrimental to the purpose of our mission.”

There was a silence between them, the sound of the windchimes strapped to her waist the only thing to be heard in the quiet of the night.

“Very well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Urgh, fight scenes are the worst.
> 
> I kind of (?) have a timeline ironed out for this so I don't confuse myself, but it's kind of shaky. I'm bad at math and it's definitely not going to follow canon to the T. I'm being really generous with ages, given that the Sandaime could've been like, Sasori's age or a generation older, depending on who's writing him.
> 
> More notes!
> 
> \- Ameyuki is derived from the character in Akatsuki Hiden, who is implied to be a grown man, not a person as young as Pakura or Komushi. The character in the book isn't from Tanigakure, but from Shangri-la, wherever that might be. I'm lying to you for the sake of plot, sorry.
> 
> \- Sasori and Komushi don't have canon affinities (Sasori doesn't really seem to have a need for it anyway, being a puppetmaster), but the affinities I did give them are very intentional.
> 
> \- Naruto as a series is really confusing with its mashup of tech and tradition and the unique nature affinities. Also I have no sense of science so if things sound wrong, it probably is.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

“Ameyuki is an A-rank missing-nin originating from Tanigakure, in the Land of Rivers,” Komushi read aloud. “She is wanted for the murder of the village head and for defecting with a national treasure -- YOWCH! Pakura, that hurts!”

Pakura clicked her tongue disapprovingly, clucking like a mother hen as she pushed Komushi’s hand aside, sticking the tape and cotton over his wounds.

“Stop whining; you’re such a baby. I need to disinfect the one on your knee, I’m warning you now.”

“Would you like some tea, Miss Pakura? Mister Komushi?” a little girl asked them, holding out a tray with snacks and drinks.

Team Sanou found themselves sitting in the center of the town at a tea shop, still recovering from their vicious encounter with the bandits three days after the fact. They had spent the last two days cleaning up the corpses that littered the northern edge of town and they all had just come out of the bath for a hot drink after a hard day’s work. Sanou had left them to talk to the town leader and send a messenger hawk to both Suna and Tani to report on Ameyuki’s status. Pakura and Komushi, on the other hand, were rebandaging Komushi’s wounds at one end of the table while Sasori sat apart from them on the other end, trying to wipe the dried blood off his marionettes.

The villagers, who had been trapped beneath the town in the bandits’ underground tunnels, were so grateful for their efforts that the team found themselves being bombarded by gifts of food and crafts. Pakura had to hold Komushi back from accepting a particularly expensive looking piece of jewelry, reminding him of the three shinobi vices, and Sanou urged them to take only what was absolutely necessary and pay for frivolities. Still, it didn’t hurt to be treated as heroes.

“I wouldn’t mind some, actually,” the kunoichi smiled gently, taking a cup of hot tea from the little server. “Thank you, sweetie.”

“Yeah, thanks!” Komushi said brightly, swiping the plate of dango from the tray as well.

The girl giggled happily before running back to the interior of the shop, and Komushi returned back to the little booklet.

“Anyway, it looks like she really  _ is  _ a missing-nin. Who would’ve thought a kid like that could be such a huge problem?”

Pakura bit back a snarky jab about Sasori, instead narrowing her eyes as she turned to their estranged teammate, who seemed unbothered by his apparent lack of inclusion in the group. Komushi noticed her gaze and put down his copy of the Bingo Book, loaned to him by their teacher.

“Are you alright?”

“That doesn’t matter,” she said quickly, turning back to him. “Are  _ you _ alright? I mean, after all that happened … and you saw it all too, I only showed up at the last minute …”

“Nah, I could barely really even tell what was going on; it happened so fast. Plus it was really dark,” Komushi shook his head. “Honestly, I’m more worried for Sasori …”

“Who cares about him?” Pakura hissed between clenched teeth. “He’s perfectly fine, isn’t he? Look at him, playing with his dolls, not a care in the world!”

“No, that’s not…” the other genin shook his head again. “You two  _ really  _ don’t get along, do you?”

“I don’t know what you were thinking, trying to get him to talk about me like that, especially when the radio was on. If I didn’t know you any better, I would’ve thought you were trying to start something with me, Komushi. I don’t like drama.”

“It wasn’t anything petty like that,” he winced. “Look, I just don’t think that guy’s any good at expressing himself, that’s all. At least, not in a way that makes sense to us. If you interpret the things he does in the right way, his intentions seem alright.”

“Maybe to you, since he’s not a complete asshole in your face,” Pakura sniffed disbelievingly. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘in a way that doesn’t make sense to us’, but it doesn’t matter whether he means well, if he doesn’t know how to act, then he just doesn’t know how to act. Simple. I shouldn’t be expected to cater to him because he lacks decency.”

Komushi groaned, taking a bite of dango as his teammate dabbed a cut with a disinfectant and slapped a bandaid on his knee.

“That’s fair, but then you get mad when he doesn’t cater to you, you know. You guys both need to learn to give a little.”

“Komushi, he  _ massacred  _ the entire band of thieves! All 87 of them! And did you see how terrible they all looked? Rotting flesh and -- some of them didn’t even look like people anymore! What, all to draw out the leader? Wasn’t there a better way? He didn’t have to do that, you guys were under orders to retreat and Sanou-sensei could’ve wiped the floor with them without killing a single one!” she cried softly, eyes quickly turning to Sasori to check if he had overheard them. “He didn’t even  _ react _ to you being taken hostage; I watched the whole thing happen! What do I have to  _ give  _ to a guy who only  _ takes _ ?”

The boy hummed, tapping his fingers against the wood of the table as he recalled that moment, when Ameyuki had gripped him by the head and threatened to break his neck. Sasori hadn’t moved from where he was standing, not even twitching a single finger in his aid. His voice had been even and cold, uncaring. But Komushi had seen it in his eyes.

_ Fear. _

“Once when I was cleaning out my dad’s old closet, I found out that there were a  _ ton _ of house spiders that made a nest there while we neglected it,” he mused aloud. “I  _ freaked _ , I hate bugs. And yeah, house spiders aren’t harmful or dangerous in the least, but I had to do something before they got all over the house, right?”

“Komushi?” said Pakura in confusion, raising a brow.

“When I’m afraid of something,” he continued. “I usually either run away or try to get rid of it entirely, even if I know it can’t hurt me. And even though those spiders were harmless, just the fact that they were there drove me crazy. So I went out to the backyard to grab a hose and ruined everything in Dad’s closet; the whole room got soaked ‘cause I tried to drown them out.”

Her gaze softened as she looked to her teammate, who was taking a long sip of tea. The ceramic cup clicked against the empty plate of dango as he set it back down.

“It was really gross; there were a bunch of wet, dead spiders all over the floor. Mom was so mad when she got home. But she wasn’t too mad, because she knew how much worse I felt, panicking, freaking out, trying to deal with it on my own because she wasn’t there.”

Komushi turned to the puppeteer, who held a sickening scarlet rag in his hand, his face locked in a frown as he inspected the dark stains on the wood of his puppets. Pakura lowered her head, but kept her gaze on their teammate, a silence seeping through the shop, like the simmering steam of the tea cup that sat besides Sasori, untouched.

 

-

 

Their teacher, whose handsome countenance was perpetually marred with the slightest hints of displeasure, looked and sounded especially severe on their trek back to Suna. On the fourth day of their stay in the outposts, a group of Tani-nin had arrived, to take Ameyuki back to the village. Sanou handed them three vials of something with a greenish tint, and they regarded it curiously.

“It’s a sedative that my student mixed,” he explained coldly, visibly annoyed with the overall situation. “It should also temporarily block her chakra paths, in case she tries to escape.”

Their eyes widened as they took them, and before they could leave, Sanou called to them.

“Don’t think Tanigakure is capable of replicating it,” he said, knowing well what that glint in their eyes had meant. “We are entrusting it to you in an undeserving show of  _ good faith _ .”

His message came across perfectly clearly, and they pocketed the vials nervously, taking back their missing-nin.

 

On the fifth day, they rested up and set out to return to their village at dusk, after as much fanfare as the tiny town could muster (fanfare that delighted Komushi). Sanou’s narrow eyebrows furrowed as they had dashed through the desert and finally came upon the Suna village borders. It took a total 24 hours to come back home, and Sasori privately looked forward to going back into his workshop, to get that bloody scent off his works. But before they could disperse, the four-man team was required to report back to the Mission Assignments Office to announce their return, and Sanou was marching up the steps with a force more intense than necessary for a simple assessment of their assignment.

The three genin had been on edge all day by their sensei’s uncharacteristic bad mood; his usual sense of calm was dampened by a cold rage, and none of them knew what exactly might have caused it. Despite Pakura’s conversation with Komushi before, she couldn’t help but shoot a mean looking glare to the back of Sasori’s head, wondering if his senseless killing spree had caused their teacher’s sour disposition.

To their surprise, the room that usually had the handful of assignment officers tasked with assisting shinobi at all hours of the day was empty, sans the Second Kazekage himself, along with a gaudily - dressed man standing beside their leader. Pakura and Komushi snapped to attention as they entered the room, clearly anxious at the sight of the imposing, tattooed figure of their village leader. Sanou, however, did not seem nearly as surprised to see the two men there.

“Lord Second,” their teacher greeted, thinly veiled anger evident in his voice.

“Sanou,” the Kage greeted in return. “I’m sure you’ve heard from our guest.”

“The representative from Tanigakure,” he identified with a bite that made Komushi flinch.

There was a tense pause, and Sanou’s gaze locked with the man dressed in colorful robes. As if relenting, the man spoke first, breaking eye contact as he jumped right onto the elephant in the room.

“Ameyuki holds with her a power native to Tanigakure. It is the greatest weapon of our village,” the representative explained. “A power that can only be withheld by your Iron Sand -- the Mud Release.”

“Mud Release is a fairytale,” Sanou snapped. “It’s said to be a mix of Water and Earth Release, the two necessary components for  _ Wood _ Release.”

“It does indeed exist,” said the man, who could at least be accredited for his ability to respond calmly to an angry Sanou. “But it’s rare, a bloodline limit wherein the clan members have been scorned for their power.  _ She  _ is our national treasure. But even at her age, she inspires fear in others because of her abilities. After killing our leader, she ran off and gathered a group of bandits, against the warnings of the rest of her kin, likely in order to raise an army to overthrow the village --”

“I don’t care whether you intend to hoard your special clansmen like well-bred beasts,” Sanou said sharply, cutting him off. “Nor do I care for your Hidden Village’s social injustices. Ameyuki is returned to you, just as you wanted, but you did so at the cost of my services. I no longer intend to accept any missions from the Land of Rivers.”

“Sanou, be reasonable,” Lord Second spoke, a tone of warning in his voice.

Sasori regarded them both intently, his lips pressed together in a thin line. “Be reasonable,” the Kazekage had said aloud. “Sunagakure can’t afford to reject clients,” he read in between. Sanou slammed a fist onto the desk, causing his teammates to flinch.

“Reasonable?!” he snarled. “You sent me on an A-rank mission with a group of mere genin! This was beyond our expectations! Beyond their skill level! My team could’ve died! What would I have told their parents? What would have I told  _ you?! _ ”

Pakura didn’t move her head, but she turned her eyes towards Sasori, who was still staring blankly ahead, as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

“No one we sent could stop her!” the representative cried. “But then we heard about you, with your Magnet Release! The ultimate defense! A sweeping sand wave that could overpower the Mud Release! You were the only one we could trust with this task! But you weren’t accepting any missions that weren’t with your team of children! We were desperate!”

Two of the genin in question shared guilty looks, their worst fears of holding their sensei back, confirmed at last.

“Sasori stopped her,” Komushi said aloud, raising a hand slightly as if he were in the middle of class. Pakura’s head snapped around to glare at him, eyes wide and furious for calling their attention to their squad. “And he doesn’t have Magnet Release. At least, I don’t think he does.”

All eyes turned to the puppeteer, who, impressively enough, did not squirm under their gaze.

“Komushi,” he said evenly, continuing to look straight ahead. “Sensei was the one who caught her. She would’ve killed you had he not appeared to rescue us.”

“Yeah, but you’re the one who drew her out, weren’t you?”

“Sensei caught her,” he repeated, a hint of vexation leaking in his voice.

“Yeah, by surprise. She was only so easy to catch thanks to you, right?”

“You flatter me. We merely exchanged words. Were you not there as witness?”

Komushi snorted.

“No, more like bait, pretty much.”

“That’s enough,” the Kazekage ordered sternly, silencing them both.

The three adults in the room turned back to each other, and Pakura elbowed Komushi hard on the shoulder, forcing him to bite down a yelp.

“Let us all agree to settle this matter without ill will and trust each other to be honest about our intentions,” Lord Second urged. “Tanigakure may have deceived you, Sanou, but your team spared none but Ameyuki, when the mission required a capture, not a slaughter. Under normal circumstances, that would be considered a failure, even if you managed to capture one of the bandits. Luckily for you, none of the thieves in question were of importance to Tanigakure or Sunagakure, and that small mistake can be easily swept under the rug. No one got hurt in the process, and we all got what we wanted.”

He rose from his seat and turned to the representative, his tall, stout stature towering over the other man in an intimidating power move.

“Should Tanigakure ever again use our shinobi without disclosing every possible detail in the manner you have done today, Sunagakure will not hesitate to cut ties with your village. Please relay that to your new leader. And Sanou--”

Lord Second turned to their teacher, speaking in a voice just as stern as he had with the other.

“I apologize for involving you in this; I was also uninformed of the true nature of this mission. I will relay my personal apologies to your team as well. I can assure you that something like this won’t happen again.”

Sanou clenched his jaw, glaring with a restrained rage at the representative.

“I should hope not.”

“Tanigakure sincerely apologizes for this grievous affair,” the man simpered, bowing deeply to the jonin. “And thanks you for your immeasurable service, Lord Sanou.”

Sanou merely huffed disbelievingly before turning around, stomping out the door. The representative sneered behind his back, and Pakura sneered in return, scowling deeply in defense of her teacher. Flinching, the man turned back to the Kazekage, bowed quickly, and shuffled out of the room with great haste.

Komushi snorted, sharing a fist bump with the snickering kunoichi.

“Pakura. Komushi. Sasori,” Lord Second called, his attention falling to the trio.

The first two stood rigidly as he walked over, his calloused hands behind his back, stance militant and strong. Sasori peered up at him through long, babyish lashes, blinking blankly.

“Lord Second,” they answered in unison.

A quiet blanketed the room, the tension palpable and ominous, sweat dripping down their necks as the trinity stood in the shadow of their great leader.

Finally, the man’s face softened, and he reached out to pat Sasori and Pakura on the shoulders. Pakura flinched in surprise and the Kazekage laughed warmly.

“Please, there’s no need for such intense formality. You probably all got that from Sanou, haven’t you?”

“Eh?”

Komushi visibly relaxed at this sudden change of character, while Pakura stared bug-eyed at their Kazekage.

“Sasori, my boy. You especially. You can’t call me your uncle while we’re alone?”

“Forgive me, Uncle Shamon,” he replied dryly, much to Shamon’s amusement. “I assumed we were still operating under false pretenses.”

The man let out another laugh, giving him a firm, hard pat on the shoulder once more.

“That wit of yours -- you get that from Satsuki, you know. Ah, you’ve grown so much. I’m sure all of you have -- Sanou’s a tough teacher, but he only takes in the best. The picky boy, he’s failed more students than I can count,” he shook his head.

The older boy genin looked absolutely delighted to witness exactly how Sasori interacted with his family, and Pakura struggled to withhold a laugh of pleasant surprise. Again, the youngest member of their team looked less than pleased with the current circumstances.

“I promised this to Sanou, but I meant it. I really do apologize for the danger I put you all through. It hurts me to find out I may have sent my own family to their early graves.”

“Graves?” Pakura repeated.

“Yes, graves. With an ‘s’. Sasori here may be my blood family, but all of this village is my family as well, including the two of you,” he said kindly, ruffling her hair. “We are all a resilient, proud clan of the Sand. And I’m certain that Sanou could tell you the same.”

The two older teammates shared a glance, grinning happily as they thanked their Kazekage.

“No, thank  _ you  _ for watching over Sasori; he’s a real troublemaker, isn’t he? Now you should all go home and get some rest. Sanou is probably waiting,” he urged. 

The three bowed and shuffled off together, Pakura swinging her arm around Komushi’s shoulder, but not before Shamon’s voice called out to them one last time.

“Sasori, my boy, could you stay here a while longer? We should talk.”

The smallest of the group paused, and the other members looked back at him. Sasori did not turn around to face his uncle, giving Komushi the chance to give him a bright thumbs up, as if to cheer him on. His frown just deepened, surprising no one, and Pakura rolled her eyes, shoving Komushi out the door with her. 

Just as the Kazekage had said, their teacher was leaning against the wall of the office building, arms crossed and eyebrows furrowed in deep thought.

“Sensei,” Pakura called out, and he looked up, his expression immediately brightening.

“Hm? Ah, you’re done then. Did Sasori get held back?” he raised a brow as the two joined him.

“Yeah, Lord Second wanted to talk to him,” Komushi shrugged, his hands behind his head as he yawned. “AUUGHHHHH -- God, that was a crazy mission. I can’t wait to tell Mom about it!”

“If you tell your mom what happened, she’ll never let you on a mission again,” Pakura rolled her eyes, nearly knocking him over with a firm slap on the back.

“Hey! I’m alive, aren’t I?”

Sanou’s lips pressed together into a thin line once more as the three of them walked across the village at an easygoing pace, the setting sun casting the stucco buildings in a bright red glow.

“Hey, Sanou-sensei!” Komushi called from behind him. “Thanks for sticking up for us. I didn’t realize you were so mad on our behalf. We thought you were mad at  _ us  _ or something; I was really worried.”

The man turned back to face the children, who looked up to him with shining eyes. His face finally relaxed, and he gave them a rare, small smile.

“You’re my students. Of course I’d be angry for you. That was a dangerous mission.”

“But listen, Sensei …” Pakura began with hesitance. “Sasori … he’s not in trouble, is he? Because of all that … you know.”

Sanou leaned his head back in thought, his eyes turning to the sky as he hummed in an uncharacteristically leisurely manner.

“Hmmm … if you two don’t mind staying with me for a bit longer, why don’t we talk about this over dinner? I’ll treat you, for a job well done.”

“Huh?!” Pakura gasped. “For real?!”

“YEAAAAHHH!” Komushi leapt in excitement. “Dinner with Sensei! It’s like a dream!”

 

-

 

As the door to the Mission Assignments Office closed, the puppeteer turned around at last. Shamon’s expression was heavy with something indiscernible, his broad shoulders slumping ever so slightly as he motioned for Sasori to come closer. Silently, he obeyed.

“Sasori,” Shamon said softly, patting his head. “I heard what happened in the outposts from Sanou.”

This mention of the incident elicited no reaction from Sasori.

“You must’ve been scared.”

“I wasn’t,” he denied sternly, evoking another sigh from his uncle.

“Admission is not a sign of weakness.”

“...”

“A boy like you wouldn’t do all that for fun.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Sasori said coolly, his eyes hardening into a glare.

“No,” Shamon replied. “You wouldn’t.”

His nephew scoffed.

“A boy like me has had time to change.”

“Not so violently, would he?”

“Violence is a shinobi’s trade.”

“Yes, but our family did not teach you violence, did we?” the Kazekage said, kneeling down to his eye level. “We taught you an art. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to weaponize it.”

Offended by this supposed act of condescension, Sasori’s childish face twitched, and he stepped out of his uncle’s grasp.

“With all due respect, it’s very funny to hear this coming from the man who revolutionized the puppet jutsu for military purposes,” he said, a cold bite to his tone.

“My boy,” Shamon said softly, reaching out for him. “You are so incredibly skilled. Senri and Satsuki would be so proud to see you now. But you’ve no idea how to use your talents. You don’t yet have the wisdom to wield your sword straight.”

“My parents’ reactions are irrelevant,” he replied, feeling deeper offense. “They aren’t here to witness it. If that’s all then, Lord Second.”

Sasori turned to leave with a sharp click of his heel.

“You aren’t in combat anymore, Sasori. You don’t have to be a puppetmaster when you are at home,” Shamon said to his turned back. “Perhaps your team can show you that.”

Without another word, the boy closed the door behind him, and the Kazekage knelt alone at the center of the office. The character for “shinobi” painted onto the ceiling hovered over him like the cold blade of a guillotine.

 

-

 

The rest of Team Sanou, on the other hand, was having an equally intense time over dinner. Their teacher had shown them to a particularly nice looking family-orientated yakiniku restaurant, to both the genins’ surprise.

“Miss, could we get a bottle of sake as well?” Sanou called through the bustling shop, beef sizzling on the grill as Komushi and Pakura sat nervously across the table from him.

Though the two of them had shared many meals together, sometimes with Sasori, sometimes without, none of them had ever sat at the same table as their teacher. As excited as they were, anxiety overrode their earlier joy and they found it hard to eat anything besides the vegetable side dishes laid out on the table.

“What’s wrong?” Sanou asked, gesturing to their empty plates. “Eat.”

“Ah! Uh, it’s … it’s not too expensive?” Pakura laughed nervously as Komushi worked anxiously on a single beansprout.

“Expensive? What? Kids like you shouldn’t be worrying about that,” he said dismissively, shaking his hand.

Komushi briefly entertained the idea of running out the restaurant while he could. His leg rocked under the table and a sharp slap on the knee from Pakura stopped him.

“It’s just that … erm …”

“Oh! If it isn’t Sanou!” a deep, rumbling voice called out, and entered the shop a stranger the genin had never seen before.

A tall, fit middle-aged man with short dark hair wearing a comfortable tunic marched to their table, a wide, warm smile split on his square face as he smacked their teacher hard on the back. Sanou choked on his rice, dropping his chopsticks, and his two students gaped at the man’s sudden entry.

“You should’ve told us you were back in Suna! Terasu and I were worried for you, you know!” he scolded, shoving him further into the booth to make space for himself. “What, are these your students? You know, you could’ve stood to introduce me sooner, you big jerk. Huh? Looks like you’re missing one. Lost one on the way, did you?”

He let out a roaring laugh, smacking Sanou on the back again before turning to the woman who was still standing at the front door and waving over to her.

“Come on, our little brother’s gonna treat us!”

“Little brother?!” Komushi and Pakura gasped together, before Komushi was caught choking on his beansprout.

“Brother,” Sanou said warningly, the familiar crease between his brows reappearing as the woman slowly made her way over to their table, sliding into the side of the booth where the man and Sanou were already sitting.

“Two more plates here, please!” Sanou’s brother called to the waitress across the room, who gave him a thumbs up.

“Little Sanou’s finally home, huh,” the woman said with an undignified snort, tapping her fingers against the table. “And here I thought you’d never make it back. C-rank mission too difficult for you? You’re losing your edge.”

“We’re the same age, there’s no need to pretend you’re any older than me,” Sanou drawled with vexation, tapping his chopsticks against the edge of his plate. “And who said I was treating any of  _ you?  _ I’m only here for my students.”

The woman scoffed as she turned her gaze to Komushi and Pakura, who were stuck staring in shocked silence at their teacher’s siblings. She sniffed condescendingly, waving her hand.

“Ugly. Dumb. You’re missing a third one so ... Late,” she announced, pointing at them one by one.

“Pakura is  _ not _ ugly! And Sasori’s never late to anything! And I’m only average!” Komushi cried out in their defenses.

“That’s not a good enough comeback!” Pakura cried in response, gripping him by the shoulder. “You should respect yourself more!”

The older brother laughed heartily as the waitress appeared at last, holding two extra sets of utensils, plates, and a bottle of sake.

“I like this one!” he chortled, reaching over to the grill and picking off the cooked beef, dropping it on Komushi’s plate. “Eat up, kid!”

Sanou, it appeared, had given up on doing anything about his imposing family members, and he returning to sipping his tea with a tiredness that Komushi and Pakura had never seen on him before. His sister took the sake and, ignoring the three small glasses, started drinking straight from the bottle.

Their teacher was surprising them a lot today.

Pakura finally got a good look at the two other adults and when she focused, she could immediately sense their familial relations. They all shared the same hair color, a deep dark ashy black, and short eyebrows. But the brother was taller, more muscled, more square, and his face was beginning to show creases where his cheeks stretched for a smile. The sister was beautiful and resembled Sanou more than her brother, her half of her long dark hair tied up into a pretty bun and the rest, framing her face delicately, but she was egregiously sloppy. She wore a purple eyeshadow and was drinking like the wind, to the kunoichi’s dismay.

“Don’t let her have that, she’s going to fall asleep,” Sanou said, nudging his brother, who snatched the bottle away from her. Between the woman’s whining, Pakura leaned over to Komushi and whispered in his ear.

“They aren’t really … like I imagined,” she admitted with a bewildered frown.

“I forgot that Sensei could have a family,” Komushi admitted as well.

“What, did you think he just manifested on the training grounds every morning to scold us?”

“I didn’t think of anything at all!”

“What are you two snickering about over there?” Sanou’s sister jeered. “Whispering sweet nothings in front of us like animals. Respect your elders!”

Sanou shot them both a look of apology as he rubbed his temple with one hand, looking positively ancient from exhaustion.

“Forgive me, Pakura, Komushi. These are my siblings. Yomi, my elder brother, and Terasu, my  _ same aged,  _ **_twin_ ** sister.”

Terasu snorted, waving her hand again.

“I was out of mother a minute before you, and that makes  _ all  _ the difference, little Sanou.”

“A  _ minute! _ ” he snapped back.

“Aren’t you shinobi always going on about how timing is everything?”

“Sensei,” Komushi called. “This might be a bit late to ask, but is it really okay that Sasori isn’t here to eat with us?”

Sanou shook his head tiredly as he leaned a hand against his chin, tapping his fingers on his ceramic cup. “No, I’m sure he and Lord Second have a lot to talk about.”

“Sasori?” Yomi raised a brow. “You mentioned him earlier, right? Where have I heard that name before … hm …”

“Satsuki and Senri’s son,” Sanou reminded him dully.

“Ooh! Wow, you ended up his teacher?! What a cruel twist of fate!” his brother whistled lowly.

“Ahh, their kid’s probably a good looking little brat too,” Terasu sighed deeply. “Senri was  _ so _ handsome and Satsuki was  _ gorgeous _ . Just my luck I ended up with a good - for - nothing who ended up dying too fast. What’m I supposed to do with a snot-nosed kid like Rasa?”

“I recommend  _ raising  _ him,” Sanou rolled his eyes. “And I would appreciate if we kept our family matters off this dinner table. My students don’t deserve to be burdened with your woes, Terasu.”

“Fine, fine. He’s probably off goofing around anyway, nothing interesting about that,” she waved her arm as she tried to grab at the sake bottle again. Yomi sternly held it away from her, and Sanou gracefully slipped it from his grasp, setting it on his side of the table. 

Komushi and Pakura were starting to get used to the family’s combined chaotic energy and relaxed enough to actually start eating the food they were cooking.

“So what’s up with Senri’s boy?” Yomi asked. “Does it have to do with the fact that you got home so late?”

The two adolescents at the table gave each other a pointed look.

“Hrrlmfghfphhg prhggpghhg,” said Terasu as she chewed on her food, reaching over for another piece of pork.

“Terasu, we don’t know what you’re saying,” Yomi said cheerfully.

“I said --” she swallowed, scooping up a spoonful of white rice. “He’s probably getting his ass kicked by the old geezer.”

“Hey, watch your language around the kids. And don’t refer to Lord Second like that. And eat some vegetables!” her brother scolded, picking beansprouts onto her plate.

“Is he really, Sensei?” Komushi asked, worry creasing his face.

“She’s only kidding,” Yomi replied comfortingly. “She thinks Lord Second is all fists because Sanou here came home with something new broken every day, back when he was a chunin.”

“Woah, Lord Second was your teacher, Sensei?” Pakura asked, wide-eyed. “It feels like everyone knows everyone.”

“It’s a small village,” Sanou said simply, wrapping his cooked beef in a perilla leaf. “And he wasn’t my squad leader, the way I am for you, but I studied under him for quite some time.”

“Yeah, we had a whole damn study group, didn’t we?” his sister snorted, shoving another spoonful of rice into her mouth.

“At least eat the lettuce, if you don’t like the beansprouts!” her brother said in an exasperated voice.

“But Missus, you aren’t a shinobi,” Komushi pointed out. “What were you studying with Lord Second?”

“That’s  _ Miss _ to you, brat. I’m single and free,” Terasu scoffed, biting into a leaf lettuce at the behest of her elder brother. “And for your information, I didn’t study  _ with _ them. They studied  _ me _ . Where do you think your beloved sensei got the idea for the Iron Sand technique? That was all  _ me _ !”

“As appreciative as Shamon-sensei and I are for your contribution,” Sanou snapped, interrupting her mid-spiel. “We studied the Shukaku  _ in you _ , not you specifically.”

“The Shukaku!” Pakura gasped, her fingers fumbling as she dropped her piece of beef into the flavored oil dip. “Ah!”

She picked it back up, dabbing it onto a pile of rice.

“Shukaku? Wassat?” her teammate asked mid-chew, leaning over at the food she had over-seasoned. “Yikes, that’s gonna be salty.”

“It’s nothing special,” Sanou drawled, dabbing a blot of pepper paste onto his bite. “You likely haven’t heard of it because it’s not commonly known among civilians.”

“For good reason too,” Yomi said with a sudden sternness in his voice. “So we should leave it at that. There’s nothing to talk about.”

Sanou shrugged, continuing with his meal in disinterest.

“Yes, that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, I’m sure Sasori is perfectly fine. We just hit a bit of a snag on our mission, that’s all.”

“Must be a pretty big snag if I saw a representative from Tanigakure shuffling here in this morning,” replied his brother, taking a sip of sake. “Man, you’re such a troublemaker, Sanou. You’re gonna lead these kids down the delinquent path.”

“Sensei, isn’t Sasori gonna get in trouble for killing all those bandits?” Komushi asked intently. “Lord Second said it was alright, but he wasn’t supposed to do that, was he?”

Pakura stopped chewing.

A moment of quiet graced the chaotic booth. Sanou sunk deeper into his own hands as he rubbed his temple harder, his two siblings gawking at Komushi as Pakura gently put her hand on his shoulder.

“Wait, was I not supposed t -- YOWCH!” he screeched, dropping his bowl and chopsticks as Pakura burned straight through his sleeve in a fit of calm, terrifying rage. “Pakura, that  _ hurt _ !”

“You idiot, civilians don’t have to know about things like that!” she snapped before tugging his collar and hissing in his ear. “Honestly, with all your emotional intelligence, you’d think you’d have a sense of how to be more discreet!”

“So Senri’s boy’s just like his uncle,” Yomi sighed. “And his grand-uncle. What a shame. Honestly, I thought his side of the family was gonna be safe. Then again, Satsuki was always pretty intense on the field.”

Terasu nodded intently, humming in agreement. “Beasts, the lot of them. I’m telling you, Senri was an anomaly.”

“It’s not like that,” Sanou insisted. “Besides, Lord Second is only that … intense, when necessary. And Elder Ebizo is much more mellow now, with his age and all.”

“Of course  _ you’d _ defend them,” his twin rolled her eyes. “You’d join the Chikamatsu family if you could.”

“I don’t think Lord Second or Elder Ebizo can be compared to him,” Pakura said sharply, surprising the table. “He was monstrous.”

“Little lady, how do you think the old geezer became Kazekage?” Terasu snorted.

“Sasori killed the group of bandits we were supposed to restrain,” the kunoichi explained, giving up on discretion entirely. “All 87 of them, in a mass slaughter. And he disabled the target we ended up having to capture. It wasn’t pretty. The mission ended up being A-rank, rather than C-rank, like we were told.”

“He only did that because they were attacking us,” Komushi argued. “We couldn’t hold them off forever! It’s not a crime to defend yourself.”

Terasu laughed, high and cold, as she put down her chopsticks.

“Figures! That’s what you get for fucking around with puppetmasters,” she chortled, ignoring Yomi’s insistence that she stop swearing in front of the genin. “The whole lot of them. I meant what I said, Senri was an anomaly. But god, his brat ended up just the same as the others!”

“Terasu,” Sanou growled warningly. “Watch how you speak of my student.”

She clicked her tongue as she snarled, standing up from her seat. 

“Just a word of advice then, Komushi, Pakura. If you kids are going to deal with puppet user, you might as well realize this.”

“ _ Terasu _ ,” Yomi said sternly.

She ignored him too, leaning forward, her scowling face turning to Pakura and Komushi.

“Why do you think he went ahead and killed a bunch of dumb weak bandits?  _ Fear?  _ Don’t kid yourself. Puppetmasters don’t do anything out of fear, no matter their age. It’s not in their MO. Strings can control puppets, but you know what controls people?”

_ “Terasu!” _ Yomi yelled, standing up from his own seat.

**“Death.”**

The restaurant went silent, sans the sound of meat grilling, and the other occupants of the shop turned their eyes onto their table, fearful concern and confusion drawn upon every face that looked to them. 

“Whatever,” she snorted dismissively, waving her hands. “I said my piece. See you, Sanou.”

She left their booth and sauntered out of the shop. The front door jingled as she closed it behind her, and the restaurant quickly recovered its former atmosphere.

“I’m so sorry about that,” apologized Yomi, handing Sanou a couple of bills. “I’ll go make sure she gets home. Bye kids, see you again soon.”

Pakura and Komushi watched him scoot out of the booth, following after his sister, before glancing at each other nervously. Their teacher looked distressed, his fingers pressed against the bridge of his nose.

“Erm,” Komushi said slowly, looking between him, Pakura, and back to the jonin again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You’ve nothing to be sorry about,” Sanou said with a sigh. “My sister is unfortunately rather … resentful. Besides, they always manage to find out about everything I’m involved in, with how Brother is on the Suna Council. I should be the one to apologize. I meant for this to be a peaceful meal.”

“Oh! A Suna councilman,” Komushi said brightly, feeling much better knowing that he hadn’t inadvertently spilled a national secret to a mere civilian.

“I don’t mind at all. Your family’s very fun, Sensei,” Pakura said kindly. “Besides, you should see the Shaku household; we’re five times worse. Seeing you like this makes me more comfortable, if I’m being completely honest.”

“Yeah, we were both so nervous when you invited us to dinner; it felt weird seeing you do something as normal as order food from a menu, ‘cause we’ve only ever seen you during training and missions,” her teammate laughed, scratching the back of his head. “But Sensei’s human too. It feels good to know.”

A small smile slipped from Sanou’s lips and he took a sip of tea to hide it. It was not lost, however, on his sharp and observant students, who grinned supportively.

“I don’t mean to appear so stern all the time. I value a militant disposition when I’m on the field and I unfortunately forget, at times, that I am at home, where it is unnecessary.”

“The desert is a harsh, savage landscape,” Pakura said knowingly. “It’s only expected that our shinobi are tough enough to match.”

Komushi looked over to her, a slightly exasperated expression drawn on his face.

“What?” she frowned back.

Her teammate just sighed, shaking his head.

“You really do just pick on Sasori, huh …”

“What? Where’d that come from!”

“If he said just what Sensei did, you’d call him an asshole and set him on fire with your Scorch Release,” Komushi pointed out.

“Sasori isn’t an experienced, well-respected jonin like Sensei,” she said simply, turning back to her meal. “Worse, he’s got no excuse to have a militant disposition when he’s only seven years out of the womb.”

“That’s certainly true,” said Sanou lightly, a hint of amusement in his voice. “But perhaps Komushi has a point.”

“Huh? That I’d call him an asshole?”

“Er, well. I don’t know about that. Perhaps?” her teacher laughed lightly.

“No, it’s  _ definitely _ , Sensei.  **Definitely** .”

“Ugh, don’t be a pain, Komushi!”

“I mean that Sasori is likely a product of his environment as well. Try to understand.”

“With all due respect,” Pakura sniffed. “We all have our demons. It’s not my responsibility to chase after him in an effort to understand what he won’t share with us.”

“That  _ is _ a fair point,” her teacher nodded thoughtfully. “But if you both keep this up, refusing to understand each other, this will only continue. And aren’t you the elder one, Pakura?”

She stared down into the coals of the grill, the heat of the smoke hazing the metal and meat like an illusionary trick. She thought about Sasori. She thought about his shitty attitude. She thought about that night, his tiny, chilling figure silhouetted against the moonlight, the grotesque marionettes hovering beside him like limp beasts, his voice, thin and savage through the grit of blood and venom.

And for a second, she entertained the thought of forgiving that horrific sight.

The coals flickered, and little embers jumped from the grates of the grill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only update at like, 3 am. I've recently come to realize I'm worse at writing dialogue exchanges than fight scenes! I imagine conversations to happen as it would in real life and they end up all over the place like this chapter.
> 
> More notes!
> 
> \- I'm desperately trying to hold off on having OCs in this to the best of my ability, but there's really so little random Suna-nin I can pick up and repurpose in the series itself. I'm avoiding using characters in Naruto's generation. So we now have (Ama)Terasu, (Tsuku)Yomi, and (Su)Sanou. I do intend to make them meaningful, rather than throwing them in there for just narrative purposes, I swear.
> 
> \- I haven't had yakiniku, but I'm Korean, so I imagine it to be like KBBQ? I had to look up what a perilla leaf is in in English and it's apparently pretty Korean rather than pan-Asian, but whatever. It's good.
> 
> \- I try really hard to not use Japanese terms / honorifics as much as I can, but Sanou does refer to his brother respectfully and whatnot.
> 
> I really want to write a chapter or two for Pakura after this. All this fuss over Sasori when she has her problems too!
> 
> As always, thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Tell me, what else should I have done?_   
>  _Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?_   
>  _Tell me, what is it you plan to do_   
>  _with your one wild and precious life?_
> 
>  
> 
> _—Mary Oliver_

Violence was not strength.

Pakura thought to herself intently as she walked home, taking the long way back to help herself digest before bed. The moon was a slice of crescent tonight, peeking over her through thin clouds, granting her just enough light to find her way safely.

_ It wasn’t fair,  _ she thought to herself bitterly, knowing full well that she shouldn’t expect things to be fair. But it  _ wasn’t _ , it wasn’t fair that Sasori had gotten off that horrendous crime scott-free. It wasn’t fair that Komushi was always on his side, even after Sasori had thrown him to the wolves. And it  _ certainly _ wasn’t fair that her teacher, who was usually so intense and stern, was so patient with their youngest teammate. Was she the only one who saw him for what he really was?

Dangerous.

It was really late in the night, possibly too late to greet her sister at home before heading off to her own bed, so she dragged her feet, knowing she’d have to somehow sneak around her older brother if she wanted to get any actual sleep tonight.

Komushi had insisted on walking her home, but she declined, partially because she knew it would be a while before she actually went home, and partially because she just wanted a little time to  _ think _ . The thoughts of the dinner conversation with her teacher and his family were still fresh in her mind. Komushi had explained his behavior away as a defense mechanism. Terasu had explained it away as a need for control, an extension of his medium that had bled into his personality.

She was more inclined to believe her teacher’s sister, but there was still a lingering feeling that that was not quite the right answer either.

When she arrived at the front of the Shaku residence, she reached to unlock the front door, only to look up and check the second floor windows for signs of anyone who might still be awake. A window was still lit, and she pursed her lips, putting her keys back in her pocket and opting instead to sneak in through her bedroom window.

 

-

 

_ “You must be patient,’’  _ the voice said soothingly, stroking his throat with both hands, contemplative, curious, and he felt his hair stand on end.  _ “Patience. Patience.” _

He reached behind him where the voice was speaking in his ear, only to hit solid wall. Still, he shrunk into it, his toes curling as he drew his knees to his chest, curling himself up into a ball as he watched the shadows flicker against the light that streamed through the crack beneath the door. Mud caked his fingernails and he tried to pick it out but it hurt, so he just let it stay. Footsteps echoed outside his room, marching along endlessly, the sound of heels clicking against hard pavement the only sound from the other side of the door, and for some reason, it scared him.

Suddenly, the door banged violently, and he flinched, digging his hands further into the wet dirt, sinking deeper into the mud.

_ “It’s your turn,”  _ the voice said, nudging him forward.  _ “Go join the others.” _

He shook his head, fists clenching harder as he felt his feet slip into the damp earth, and he dug harder into it, as if to hide himself, to stop the voice from pushing him further forward. But it was insistent, pressing against his back like a hard rock, and the knocking was growing louder.

_ “Join the others,”  _ it ordered, this time sounding like a man.

He was sinking deeper.

_ “Join the others!”  _ it snarled, and this time, it sounded like a girl.

The banging on the door grew louder.

_ “Join the others!”  _ it begged, and this time, it sounded like a boy.

The banging grew louder.

_ “Join the others!” _ it said one last time, and this time, it sounded ancient.

And finally, it stopped.

The doorknob clicked.

**_“Sasori?”_ **

 

It wasn’t sudden. He slowly opened his eyes, long crimson lashes fluttering as he dozed out of his dreamscape, groaning softly as he raised his head from where it had been pressed against his forearm. The afternoon sun spilled through the windows, its curtains pushed aside to welcome the warmth, and his eyes finally focused enough for Sasori to realize his own bearings.

His careful clutter strung about the room in the form of humanoid dolls, a carving tool still clutched in his sore hands, and the arm he had fallen asleep upon was numb and prickly, to his vexation. Turning his eyes to the side, he finally realized who had woken him up.

“And here I thought you were in some sort of trouble, with the way you weren’t answering the door. But I guess you’re still a kid too, sleeping in on your off days,” said Pakura, rolling her eyes as she leaned one hand against the back of his chair. “I would’ve thought you’d’ve known better than to nap with these kinds of things on the desk.”

As if he hadn’t heard her, Sasori frowned, looking incredibly displeased.

“How did you get in? Do I need to set traps for my own home?”

She scoffed.

“I’m a shinobi.”

“Hm,” he replied dismissively, letting out a wide yawn as he craned his stiff neck.

“You weren’t answering no matter how hard I knocked, and the light was still on in this room,” she explained. “I figured you wouldn’t be the type to leave things undone like that so carelessly.”

Pakura glanced at his messy desk, a half - finished puppet leg and piles of wood shavings littering the top.

“Guess I was wrong.”

“I suppose so,” he said without conviction, moving to take out a garbage can that was slid beneath the workspace. With one hand, he took a large brush from the wall and wiped the table clean into the trash, dust fluttering in ashes of light brown, making her sneeze. “Why did you come here?”

“Ugh, that itches -- oh, for this.”

She held out an ordinary plastic bag, a cartoon raccoon drawn on its side with the logo of a restaurant.

“Sensei took me and Komushi to yakiniku last night. He felt bad you didn’t get to have any, so he bought some of their meats and side dishes to-go so you could have it at home. Komushi was supposed to bring it to you this morning, but he got an earful from his mom for going on a dangerous mission without her knowing, so…”

He stared blankly at the contents as she carefully dropped the bag in his hands.

“...”

“...”

They both stared at the bag in dead silence.

“...Is there a problem?” she raised a brow, peeved by his lack of thanks.

“No,” Sasori responded, picking it up by the handle and standing out of his seat. “I’ll figure it out.”

His face twitched in discomfort as he stretched his still-sleeping arm and made his way out of his work room. A realization dawned upon Pakura, who followed soon thereafter.

“Wait,” she called out, as she walked after him down the steps to the first floor. “Don’t tell me…”

She met him at the the foot of the stairs, but the younger boy very conspicuously avoided her eyes and ignored her, shuffling away to put the bag in the refrigerator.

“...Do you not know how to cook the meat?”

He stopped, and for a moment, all she could see of him was his red tousled hair peeking from the wrappings of his white shawl.

“I said I’d figure it out.”

“You don’t know how to cook for yourself?”

“...”

“I won’t laugh, you know.”

She was answered with another wave of silence and all at once, she realized something strange and foreign. Pakura saw, standing afar, how little Sasori actually was, standing in the middle of his empty kitchen, swallowed by his oversized clothing, having to lean on his toes to reach over onto the far end of the counter, even with the aid of a stepstool. 

This house was so much bigger when there was only one, very tiny occupant. Suddenly, she could understand, just a little, why his workroom was so crowded with human figures.

“Geez … you’re more trouble than you’re worth,” Pakura groaned, marching over to grab the bag back out of the refrigerator as he poured himself a glass of water. “Go change out of your sleepwear. We can cook it at my place.”

Sasori gave her a long, deafening stare as he sipped his drink, and she had the odd sensation that he knew what he was trying to say.

“Shut up,” she said, shoving her shoes back onto her feet at his front door. “My sister cooks better than I do and I don’t want to hear  _ anything  _ from a brat who can’t cook for himself.”

“You’re oddly defensive. I’m just drinking water,” he said with a touch of amusement.

“And you’re unusually chatty for someone who’s being offered help,” Pakura sniffed. “Do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Piss people off when they’re trying to be nice.”

Honestly, she couldn’t see why Komushi was so taken with this weird little kid. The kunoichi could at least acknowledge why her teacher was so careful with him, given his battle prowess, his influential family, and the general fact that he had been assigned to this task, but Komushi had no such excuses to be so friendly with him. Maybe he saw what she just had in that kitchen, but sooner. 

…

Still, that tiny revelation that Sasori was, in fact, a very young child, did not endear her to him as much as it had possibly done to their mutual teammate.

“That’s never my intention, no. But that doesn’t really matter, I suppose,” he finally admitted after a thoughtful pause, and he shuffled back up the stairs, probably to change into something better suited for outdoor wear.

 

-

 

“Pakura, you’re home so soon!” a frail looking older girl cried as she greeted the two at the door. “I thought you were off on errands for your friend?”

The kunoichi shrugged, slipping her shoes off, motioning for Sasori to do the same.

“Yeah, I was. Komushi’s  _ grounded _ , if you can believe it. I was just gonna drop this off at Sasori’s, but turns out he doesn’t know what to do with it.”

The boy in question pressed his lips in a thin line, clearly annoyed by her choice of words as he gracefully kicked off his own shoes and laid them out neatly by the doorside.

“Excuse me,” he said politely as he entered, a hint of vexation pointed at Pakura.

“So you’re the famous Sasori!” the girl cried, shuffling to make space at the doorfront. “Come in, come in! We’ve heard so much about you from our Pakura--”

_ “Sister,”  _ Pakura groaned as they entered the Shaku residence. “Not  _ now. _ ”

Now that Sasori thought about it, it made perfect sense for this girl to be Pakura’s older sister. She looked about fifteen or sixteen, with the same strange hues entwined in her hair like her sister. But her eyes were softer, kinder, and it was odd to see Pakura being treated like a child by her. She was fussing over whether her younger sister had eaten yet, whether Komushi needed anything, bending over backwards just to see if she had any needs she could fulfill.

“Actually, there  _ is _ something,” Pakura huffed at last, holding the shopping bag of yakiniku she had brought over. “Can you cook this for us?”

“Oh!” she took the bag, checking its contents. “Do you want it served like proper yakiniku or as another dish with these ingredients?”

She shrugged, turning to Sasori, who, having never seen a residence of a wealthy family, was still looking around the house with large doe-like eyes, inspecting the decorations, the build, the tapestries and photos lining the walls. Pakura’s sister put a hand to her cheek, holding in something that sounded like an endearing coo. She gave him a nudge, and he turned his attention back to them.

“Any way that’s easiest for you,” he said at last, before returning to his staring.

“Of course!” she smiled sweetly, closing the bag back up. “Do you want some too, Pakura? You haven’t had lunch yet, right? Our brother isn’t home yet, so it’s just us right now.”

“Uh, it’s Sasori’s food, so…”

“It would be rude of me to deny you and your sister the food you both are graciously providing me,” he responded with a delicacy that surprised Pakura.

“Oh, that’s so sweet! When Pakura talks about you, I always imagined she was talking about a man; she never mentioned how  _ small _ and  _ cute _ you w--”

_ “Sister!” _ she hissed, shoving her into the kitchen.

“Do you two want any tea?” her sister laughed, letting herself get pushed away. “I’ll bring it up to your room!”

“My room?! We’re gonna be in the  _ living room! _ ” Pakura said, shoving her harder.

The sound of giggling echoed in the hallways until it faded into what Sasori could only assume was the kitchen. His host was looking uncharacteristically frazzled as she came back to the entry hall and tiredly lead him to their sitting space, a neat large room with sofas and a coffee table decorated with more tapestries and photos. Pakura flopped onto a couch with a casual air he’d never seen about her, and he gracefully accepted the seat across the table from her.

“She’s like that with everyone I bring home,” she groaned, rubbing her face. “Honestly, it was a madhouse when Komushi came over for the first time; they both couldn’t shut up--”

“What did your brother do?” he asked suddenly, blatantly ignoring her explanation as he stared at her.

Suddenly, those intense honey eyes weren’t quite as charming as her sister thought when they were on her. Her gaze hardened as she scowled, crossing arms and her legs.

“Not one for small talk?” she sneered.

“Why waste your time? And mine, for that matter.”

“I don’t see how anything about my family is any of  _ your  _ business.”

Sasori hummed, leaning back into his own seat.

“I’m curious.”

“Funny,” she scoffed. “I’ve never thought you’d be one for gossip.”

“Puppetry is as much of a science as an art,” he said softly. “And science requires knowledge.”

“Keep your nose to yourself, then,” said Pakura, feeling more and more regretful that she ever brought this little creep into her house. “My brother has nothing to do with your science.”

Sasori seemed unbothered by her prickly attitude, and they were interrupted by Pakura’s sister, who had brought in a tray of tea.

“I would’ve brought some snacks, but we’ll be having lunch soon anyway,” she said cheerfully, sitting the cups on the coffee table.

Ever the polite guest, Sasori thanked her dutifully, but Pakura continued to scowl from across the table as her sister left the two to their tense silence. He ignored her again, instead opting to take a quick sip from his own cup.

“You want to know why I did it, didn’t you?” he said at last, breaking the quiet as he set it back down.

“Why you did what?”

“Why I killed those thieves, of course,” he said, with the same manner one would use to talk about the weather. “Don’t play dumb. You aren’t dumb.”

This surprising compliment was unfortunately marred by the context, and her scowl only intensified.

“If I have a penchant for gossip, you’re one to talk,” Sasori continued lightly. “You and Komushi aren’t very subtle, whispering behind my backs the whole trip home.”

“I wasn’t  _ trying _ to be subtle,” Pakura insisted.

“Yes, so I assumed. So why don’t we have an exchange? I’m awfully curious, and you don’t seem the type to give without taking.”

She snorted at the very thought. What a way to project; it was  _ Sasori’s _ style to give and take. It was always how it was with him. Komushi only ever gave. Sensei only ever gave.  _ She  _ only ever gave.

And what did they ever receive for their troubles?

87 corpses and the disquieting feeling of guilt on her back.

“How presumptuous,” she said coldly. “You’re in  _ my _ house.”

“At your invitation,” he responded in return, taking another long sip. “I’d hardly call that a home field advantage.”

“You really don’t think I’d shell out my family’s issues to you for information like  _ that _ ?” Pakura said. “You don’t even care about telling me why you did it. You’re giving it away just to know something you didn’t even care to know before you got in here.”

“I always could’ve told you,” he shrugged. “But you never asked.”

She seethed through her teeth.

“So it’s not even that vital to you. Again,  _ why _ would I tell you anything that’s important to  _ me _ if I’m not getting something equally important in exchange? Are you that stupid?”

“No, and I don’t think you are either, so stop acting like it,” Sasori said coolly. “Because even if it’s not important to me, it’s important to  _ you _ .”

Slighted, Pakura sunk back into her seat, her arms crossed, and her scowl instead dissipating into something more complex than mere anger. Rage, curiosity, guilt, and frustration all struggled on her pretty features, and watching her fight herself made it worth the wait. He took another sip.

Finally, after a long pause, she spoke.

“You don’t talk like how a seven year old should talk,” Pakura said slowly. “It’s not cute.”

“Most seven year olds are not qualified shinobi with two years worth of battle arts drilled into them,” he replied easily. “For a ten year old, you aren’t so cute yourself, setting things on fire like a madman.”

She slouched, and a defeating smile twitched on the edges of her lips.

“Haha, I guess so.”

Another pause.

“Two years? You’re not talking about the Academy, are you?”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

“Then Lady Chiyo taught you puppetry when you were five?”

His face was blank, but his hand twisted up into a fist on his lap, and it told her more than he ever could.

“Yes.”

“You’re not happy about that?” she tried.

“Is this an interrogation?” he said coolly.

“You want to know about my brother, don’t you?”

“Yes, but I already offered my side of the bargain. Any more and you’ll be owing me.”

It was a chilling warning to hear, from a child so small and so intense.

“Why not lead up to it?” she offered. “Every time I ask you a question and you answer, you can ask me something too. We hardly know much about each other anyway.”

He was about to ask, rather rudely, what he possibly could have to gain from knowing fun facts about her, and vice versa, but the curiosity he had about the Shaku household held a firm grip on his tongue. He relented.

“Fine. You asked me three questions. Then it’s my turn.”

Give and take. Give and take.

“Sure,” Pakura yielded.

“The Shaku family is a large collective -- a good chunk of Sunagakure’s forces, even if they’re not all Scorch Release users. You have a large residence on the south side of the village. Why do you live in a small house made for a single family?”

Oh. That  _ was  _ a good question. He had a knack for picking at all of her sore spots, to her intense displeasure, and her lips pressed together in a thin line.

“That’s another family matter. It’s hardly fair for you to ask me something that important after I just asked you a bunch of inane questions.”

Sasori shrugged.

“Then I’d rather use up all three questions I had for you to answer this one.”

The nerve of this brat.

“We’re figuring stuff out,” she said after some struggle. “The main house is crowded anyway.”

He looked entirely dissatisfied with that answer, but did not press further, to her relief.

“My turn,” said Pakura, turning the tables on him. “Why do  _ you  _ live alone? You have the Honored Siblings  _ and _ the Kazekage as your family. You can’t even cook for yourself. Shouldn’t you live with them?”

“I don’t  _ want  _ to live with them,” he said, scrunching up his face in something that looked like disgust. “I want to live at home.”

“But there’s no one  _ at _ your home.”

“Yes, but grandmother, granduncle, and uncle’s houses are all equally empty. Why should esteemed Suna Council members and the Lord Kazekage himself be expected to babysit me, when I’m not even their son?”

A pause. Pakura’s face creased into something indiscernible, almost soft.

“Are you afraid of burdening them?”

“It’s my turn,” he said sternly, but he sounded like a petulant child.

Pakura yielded once more, but the expression did not go away, and Sasori was suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to slap it off her face.

“You have lots of pictures of you and your elder sister, and another woman who stops appearing at a certain point,” he said coldly, a cruel bite to his tone. “Where is she?”

Pakura froze, her grip on her own teacup growing harder. He was dangerously close to getting the answers he wanted. Perceptive brat. Her previous concern for him melted away instantaneously.

“Dead. My turn. Where are your parents?”

He, too, turned cold.

“Dead. My turn. Why is your sister dead?”

This was getting dangerous.

“She got killed,” Pakura replied evenly. “My turn. Why are  _ your _ parents dead?”

“They got killed,” Sasori replied evenly as well. “My turn. How was  _ your  _ sister killed?”

Dangerous. Dangerous.

“Killed in action,” she said, and it technically wasn’t a lie. “How were your parents killed?”

“Killed in action,” he said, and it was the truth. “Who killed your sister?”

Dangerous. Dangerous. Dangerous.

“Why did you kill those thieves?”

“Who killed your sister, Pakura?”

Her gaze was frigid, but a fury was curling at the pit of her stomach like a scorching inferno, burning at her flesh, tearing at her torso. Sasori did not relent, though he felt his skin prickle into goosebumps, and stared right back with dull, expectant eyes. As if he were bored of this. As if he were above all this.

Pakura could kill him.

“Tell me about the bandits first,” she said between grit teeth.

_ Ah, _ Sasori thought.  _ So that’s it. _

“I killed them,” he said slowly, intentionally. “Because they were the enemy.”

Pakura’s cup slammed against the table, almost hard enough to break the ceramic.

_ “That’s not good enough.” _

“Komushi speaks of the incident as though we had an opening to escape. We didn’t,” he continued as though nothing had happened. “So I sought to make one.”

“Making an opening for escape is not the same as slaughtering them all.”

“No,” Sasori agreed. “It isn’t. Anyone who isn’t a shinobi is remarkably easy to kill. They have no idea what they’re dealing with when chakra is employed. Like neanderthals staring at the sun. Making an opening was easy, but it wasn’t enough.”

He paused to reach over to the table where he had left his teacup, and took another sip. Pakura watched him intently.

“They had a shinobi on their side. I overheard them talking about a powerful leader they had gained after she beat the original in combat. She had employed genjutsu in order to distract us from her diversion plan. She knew that shinobi would come after her, and likely intended to stay hidden until her meat shields ran out. If she were going to run at the first sign of trouble, she wouldn’t have set up all those illusionary boulders to begin with. That is not an escape plan. That’s a plan of attack.”

“So you killed them to draw her out?” Pakura cried, her voice fraught with disbelief.

Sasori regarded her curiously.

“That’s what I told Komushi when I advanced,” he said as though it were obvious.

“How did you know she was a rogue ninja?”

“I didn’t,” he shrugged. “I just knew we needed at least one bandit for interrogation purposes, and it would be easier to just pick the one at the very top. It turned out she was the real target all along. It all worked out.”

It was too easy. The motive. The way he talked about it. The answer. Sasori seemed to notice this dissatisfaction brewing in her, and he scoffed softly.

“Did you really think there was more to it than that?”

She didn’t respond, her fists clenching, nails scraping against the fabric of the sofa at her side, eyes cast down in bitter frustration.  _ Did _ she really believe he was capable of anything more than that? That he had a morally righteous explanation for her peace of mind? A reason to think that maybe he wasn’t as villainous as he had made himself out to be?

_ Fear _ , Komushi had said.

_ Control _ , Terasu had warned.

_ Nothing,  _ Sasori had scoffed. Nothing. It was nothing so deep. It just was.

The answer tasted bitter on her lips.

“Pakura,” he interrupted her thoughts, sounding annoyed. “They were the enemy. They knew what they were getting into when engaging in combat with us. Their deaths are the fault of no one but themselves.”

“But you didn’t have to!”

“It doesn’t matter whether I had to. I did it,” he drawled. “Children are all so silly, wasting their time on meaning and intention. It doesn’t matter what I thought. I did it. Are you going to keep moaning on and on about whether you think it was right or wrong? Those men and women are dead and will remain that way, no matter how much you cry about it.”

_ “Fairness is not a word I recommend clinging to,”  _ her teacher’s voice echoed in her thoughts.

“What will you do because you’re unhappy that a lot of people died? Would you feel less bad about it if there were only ten thieves there that day to die? Five? One? Aren’t you just upset because the mere number of them scared you?” scorned Sasori. “Why are  _ you _ even so scared anyway? You were only there afterwards. Komushi watched me kill them, and he’s perfectly fine.”

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. The bitterness felt like bile in her throat. Her brother faded into memory, the memory of his long black mourning robes dragging after his broad back invading her thoughts like a pestilence.

“Are you angry? Are you afraid? What are you going to do for the dead? Are you going to find their families and apologize? What will you apologize for? That you didn’t stop me? Are you going to avenge them? Are you going to kill me?”

Sister was dead, sister came back mangled like a piece of meat thrown to the wolves for slaughter, sister didn’t look like sister --

_ “Why did she have to die?” Pakura had cried to her remaining sister. _

_ “Why aren’t my parents coming home?” Sasori had cried to his grandmother. _

It never mattered  _ why _ . It just  _ was _ .

Pakura’s fingers unfurled as her fist released. Her shoulders slumped in an exhaustion she couldn’t place, and Sasori took the last sip of his teacup.

“We had an older sister,” she said at last, after an especially long silence. “The one in the photos. Our eldest, our brother, killed her.”

The only sound in the room was the clinking of the teacup touching the top of the wooden table, as Sasori set it down for the last time.

“Nothing in this world lasts,” he said with a note of finality, as if repeating a mantra he did not quite understand. “We should all strive to spend our limited time wisely.”

 

-

 

Lunch was a quiet meal on Pakura’s part. She hadn’t felt like eating, but she chewed slowly on the beef bowls that her sister had cooked up for them anyway, because leaving the table was more conspicuous than trudging through the affair. Her sister, on the other hand, was perfectly cheerful, offering Sasori helping after helping, even though he struggled to finish only one. The food was good, so it certainly wasn’t her sister’s fault she had lost her appetite. Not even Sasori finally admitting that he was a little afraid to use the stove in case he used it wrong and it caught fire, highlighting further the ridiculous juxtaposition of his bizarre character, cheered her up from that intensely depressing conversation in the living room. Her sister, on the other hand, found it incredibly charming and cute, because  _ “oh honey, that makes perfect sense, the stove is scary when you’re not used to it and you’re still a baby, aren’t you?” _ to his immense displeasure. It was  _ amazing _ how quickly she had taken to Sasori, solely for the fact that he was, despite his unpleasant mannerisms, very small and looked somewhat like a baby deer, or perhaps a kitten. Pakura had even  _ complained _ about him to her, but none of her stories of his shitty attitude seemed to have deterred the motherly affection her sister was currently smothering on him. If she had it her way, she would probably baby him for the rest of his life. 

Maybe if Pakura hadn’t watched him bathing in the blood of his enemies, she’d have the luxury of believing that too. 

Her sister had only given her that look once, a warning sign that she was going to ask her about her behavior later, when the guest had left, and Pakura braced herself for the scolding she was going to get for being such a mood-killer at the table.

“Sanou-sensei certainly bought you a lot, didn’t he?” her sister said pleasantly, wrapping up the leftovers in plastic containers. “What a good man. Take the rest home with you, have it when you’re hungry!”

“Oh no,” Sasori shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly. You cooked it.”

“And I’ll cook for you again if you need, just let Pakura know when you want some of big sis’s food!” she cooed, patting his cheek. “Come visit more, Little Sasori!”

It took every ounce of his willpower to not scrunch up his face and snarl in offense at the term of endearment, especially not towards someone who was literally handing him his next three meals, so Sasori bit his tongue took the containers, wrapped in a pink patterned cloth, and bowed shortly. She gave him one last pat on the head before returning back into the house, saying something about cleaning up before going shopping for dinner.

Sasori wondered if all civilian women were as dutiful with their housework as she was, vaguely remembering his father to be the one to make the meals in the house. 

He and Pakura were on a weird wavelength now, though he wasn’t entirely certain if they had come to some sort of silent agreement with each other, or if he just felt that way because she was being even quieter than usual. There was no Komushi to break the silence, and he stood there at the front door, shoes on, staring at her as she stared back, before he turned to leave at last.

“Thank you for inviting me,” he said simply, as he left.

Pakura did not respond immediately, as if lost in complicated thoughts, and he was out the door and three steps away from her home before she finally spoke.

“By the way,” she said to him as she leaned against the panel of the doorway, watching him leave. “If you’re having bad dreams, you should talk to Lady Chiyo about it, even if you don’t like her. She could prescribe you something.”

Sasori froze, slowly turning his head to Pakura, who was gazing at him with a knowing look.

“You’re still a kid too, huh… Even if you keep forgetting.”

“You --”

But the front door to the Shaku household closed, and Sasori stood there numbly, offended by her consideration, offended she hadn’t even bothered to act smug about that bit of information, and feeling for the first time as though he had truly and definitely lost to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter fought with me, partially because I didn't have the time to sit down and write it all in one go like the others. Winter break is ending soon, which means I have to go back to focusing on my thesis TT___TT  
> It's really strange to think I'm writing about a seven and ten year old in the manner that I am, given how goofy actual seven and ten year olds are in real life. But then again, they aren't child soldiers and Sasori is pretty intense as a kid in the anime.
> 
> I'm wondering if I should split the biggest arcs into different works and file them under a collection...
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

Sanou’s footsteps were brisk and light, the heels of his sandals clicking against the wooden floors of the main office building as he shuffled through a handful of request papers, all with varying degrees of descriptions of A-rank missions. There were even a couple of S-rank missions shuffled in there for good measure, and he glanced at them all briefly before humming with disinterest and reaching his destination. But when he reached for the door, it slammed open, nearly knocking him in the face, as a familiar, but disappointed face stepped out.

“I’ll convince you one day!” Komushi cried, only to stop at the sight of his sensei and frantically apologize.

“S-Sensei! I’m so sorry, I almost hit you there, I didn’t mean --”

“It’s alright,” he said simply, raising a hand to hush him. “What’s all the fuss, Komushi?”

He opened his mouth to speak, only to pause, looking briefly like a fish out of water, and then close it back and look away.

“It’s nothing you can help me with, Sensei,” he pouted before running off past him, to Sanou’s surprise.

“Oh, hey--!” he raised his brows as his student flew off down the hallway. “Weren’t you in trouble with your mothe -- oh, forget it.”

Sanou sighed as he knocked on the half-open door, entering as the woman’s voice welcomed him in. It creaked open, and councilwoman Chiyo sat behind her office desk, looking disgruntled and entirely annoyed, the slight indications of creases on her face growing deeper as she frowned.

“Did my student disturb you, Elder Chiyo?” he asked delicately as he stood before her, papers still in hand.

She huffed in indignation, returning to her own paperwork.

“He came barging into my office, demanding me to train him. The nerve!”

“Ah, that matter,” he hummed. “This isn’t the first time, if I’m correct.”

“Which makes it all the worse!” she said snappishly. “Young people these days have no respect! They think their sheer willpower and enough whining will get them what they want!”

“Well, that is the virtue of youth,” Sanou replied breezily. “They have a tenacity that we could never regain.”

“Don’t you start acting like you understand,” Chiyo snorted. “You’re barely 30; it’s insulting that you would try to relate to me.”

“With all due respect, you certainly are one to talk. With the way you act, people might think you’ve finally hit 50,” he said with equal lightheartedness, rolling his eyes. “I don’t see why you won’t train him; he might not have a particularly impressive background, given his civilian family, but he has great potential and unusually excellent chakra control. Why, Sasori even showed him how to use chakra strings a couple of weeks ago and he wasn’t half bad.”

She looked up from her paperwork, eyes wide in startlement.

“Sasori has friends?”

“Komushi would probably call him a friend,” Sanou nodded. “Even though Sasori hardly reacts to his antics, much less holds a conversation. He’s a funny kid, that one.”

The disgruntlement on her face shifted into something else, her eyebrows furrowed not in vexation, but instead in deep thought, as she tensed slightly at the possibility. Was her grandson actually doing alright? Making friends? Was Komushi a good influence? Or any influence at all, really?

As if sensing her struggle, Sanou jumped into the heart of the matter.

“Are you refusing to be his teacher for any real reason beyond the fact that you find his age to be personally offensive, Lady Chiyo?”

Sharp as a hawk, her eyes shot to Sanou and narrowed.

“Don’t you sass me, young man,” she ordered, wagging her pen at him. “And you _know_ I don’t take students. With all the work to be done at the hospital _and_ for the Council, I hardly have the time.”

“Yes, that certainly is a well-crafted excuse,” he drawled.

“Yes, it is,” she sniffed unconvincingly. “Now what did you come here for, Sanou? Not to bully an old woman like me, surely? Any more and I might have a heart attack.”

His good humor melted away into something more stern as he raised the papers in his hands, placing them on her desk.

“I wanted to file a complaint.”

“A complaint?”

“Yes,” he said solemnly. “A complaint. Against the Missions Assignment Officers.”

She flit through them with a licked finger, confusion spreading across her face.

“What do you mean? These are all missions requests reasonable for a jonin. Did you lose your ranking while I was asleep last night?”

“No,” Sanou said flatly. “I specifically said I would not be taking any missions without my team, and my team currently are not made of shinobi qualified to join in any of these tasks. And yet, the office refuses to acknowledge this.”

“Sanou,” Chiyo replied sternly, putting the papers down. “You are an esteemed and highly valued shinobi, one of the only three descendants of the First Kazekage’s bloodline. And the only one of the three to be a shinobi rather than a civilian. It’s unreasonable for the office to expect to reassign these missions to someone else; they’re all best suited for someone with your skillset and jutsu.”

“I want to focus on training my team,” he insisted.

“Don’t be a spoiled brat,” she snapped. “The village is overwhelmed with these request tasks, and rejecting them is showing the world that we are too weak to handle them. I expect you to complete them _and_ train your team.”

“Yes, that’s what you expect,” he replied dryly. “But certainly not what I intend to do. I’m all full liberty to reject missions as I please, no matter how many notices are sent my way.”

“You would disobey me? I’d call that treason. I could suspend your team.”

Sanou raised a brow.

“I think you and I both know that something as small as legalities wouldn’t stop me.”

A terse silence blanketed the room, Chiyo scowling as she clenched her hands together into a polite fist on the desk. Sanou, on the other hand, looked thoroughly unimpressed by her threats. Another minute passed and to Chiyo’s surprise, the man spoke first.

“But, perhaps under _certain_ conditions, I won’t be entirely opposed to accepting some of these requests.”

Her scowl did not relent.

“Do you think you are in any position to set the terms?”

“I certainly do,” Sanou said confidently. “In fact, I believe my position allows me to show a little muscle every now and then for the things I want most.”

“And what would that be?”

The corners of his mouth jerked into the slightest of smirks.

“Accept Komushi as your student. Train him diligently.”

Chiyo groaned.

“That again! Somehow, I knew you were going to bring him up. Good heavens Sanou, I’ve never met a man so ridiculously invested in his genin!”

“That’s a shame,” he said lightly. “This village could benefit greatly from valuing the importance of teamwork.”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” she snapped, but her voice wasn’t unkind. “Sanou, you _do_ know I don’t resent you for what happened to Senri and Satsuki? You don’t have to keep --”

“That’s not my intention,” he snapped back, but his voice was severe. “I have concerns beyond Sasori’s well-being. I am not his father, nor his friend. I am his teacher, and the teacher to two other young Suna-nin who require the developmental assistance more than him. The sooner I teach them to sustain themselves independently, the sooner the Missions Assignment Office stops sending me these unwarranted summons.”

And with that, Sanou bowed stiffly and left her office, but not before getting in the last word.

“I’ll let Komushi know you’ve approved his request.”

 

-

 

Komushi gave a long, powerful stretch and his spine cracked satisfyingly as he wriggled in his seat, yawning up a storm. Chiyo narrowed her eyes from across the table, using a single chakra string to throw his head back into the book he was reading.

“AUGH!!! I GET IT, I GET IT, SORRY LADY CHIYO!” he cried as he wriggled against the chakra-laden grip on his temple.

Komushi was still under house arrest at the behest of his irate and worried mother, but the one thing she _did_ let him attend were study sessions with Lady Chiyo (because who could say no to such an esteemed councilwoman?). Still, between getting grounded and running errands for his mother and training and socializing with his team, there was very little time for him to actually study. Meaning --

“It’s impolite to yawn,” she scorned rather sternly, clicking her tongue as she released the thread. “You’re not even halfway through the assigned reading. How do you intend to put anything to practice if you can’t even understand the theory?”

“I know!” Komushi cried, rubbing his forehead. “But it’s 4 AM! The sun’s not even up y-ye--”

He broke into another yawn, and Chiyo flicked her finger again. His head slammed back into the pages of the medical textbook, and he yelped once more.

“No complaining,” she ordered. “I haven’t completely decided on whether to take you in as a permanent student, and so far, you’ve yet to put up a convincing argument for it.”

“Yes ma’am,” her student snickered, leaning back into his book as she raised a brow with a hint of aggravation.

“Is that so comedic to you, Komushi?”

“No, no--” Komushi giggled, shaking his hands. “I was just thinking -- it feels like getting scolded by Sasori.”

Her eyebrow rose higher as she put down her pen, her eyes widening ever so slightly at such a brazen declaration.

“...You know my grandson,” she began slowly, subtly trying to slide into what sort of information Komushi had on him, only to be surprised when the boy bounced in excitement.

“Oh yeah, we’re best friends!” he chirped. “I mean, that’s what I think, I don’t know if he’d necessarily _agree_ , but at least on my end I’d say so!”

“Best friends?” she repeated.

Sasori would sooner pick a favorite weapon than a favorite friend.

“Yeah, we have dinner together sometimes with Pakura, but I just kinda come over to his house whenever ‘cause I think he spends too much time holed up in his work room all day. Tell him about my day and stuff. Lately, he’s been replying in words instead of grunts and hums, which isn’t much since he replies like once every half hour, but man, it’s still _such_ an improvement--”

Chiyo raised a hand to interrupt him, cutting through his chatter.

“You visit him? And he talks to you?”

“Huh? Oh, yes, he got annoyed with having to get up from his work to let me in so he just let me have a copy of his house key, which is super handy! Sometimes he tells me about his project, which looks really cool so far, you should see it -- wait, am I talking too much again? He says I do that, sorry.”

“No,” she said with a hint of incredulousness, deeply fascinated. “Does he say that?”

“Yeah, but I’m only so chatty ‘cause he never really says much. He says he’s busy thinking,” he stuck out his tongue. “But I wish he’d think out loud; I’ve got no idea what goes on in that head of his. I’d love to know though, he looks like he’s got some _fascinating_ ideas. One time I mentioned how my knees feel sore sometimes and he just kinda huffed exasperatedly and then told me I’ve been walking wrong. Apparently, I’ve been locking my leg weird, so the bone took the weight instead of muscle -- can you believe that! He sounded like he knew for a while; I wonder why he didn’t think to tell me until I mentioned it.”

Chiyo privately stewed in this sudden influx of insight on her grandson, a hand raised to press against her chin as she watched this boy talk incessantly about the child she thought whose defenses were impenetrable. So Sasori had a certain understanding about human anatomy, did he? Enough to know that Komushi’s way of walking was the cause of his symptoms, meaning he was both knowledgeable _and_ observant. She was under the impression that he was interested only in the act of modifying and playing with his puppets; it was a surprise to hear he might’ve had an interest in medicine. And to think, Sasori was so used to Komushi’s company that he even let him have a house key -- something only his remaining family had in possession.

And even then, she thought guiltily to herself, she rarely used her copy.

“-- and then I almost fell straight through and drowned in the sand, and then Sasori had to pull me out with his strings; Pakura was _so_ mad at us for --”

“Is he…” Chiyo hesitated, her stern demeanor failing her as she struggled with her words. “...is he eating alright?”

Komushi stopped, wide-eyed as his face softened into something tender.

“Yes,” he spoke gently, a sweet smile tugging on his lips. “He likes okonomiyaki with bacon and shrimp.”

“...I see,” she said softly, relaxing a little. “Komushi ... why don’t we make a deal?”

 

-

 

Outside of the handfuls of individual tasks they’d receive from the Missions Assignment Office every couple of days, the three found themselves with a lot of free time on their hands. Their teacher, unfortunately for them, had accepted a series of long - term S-rank missions outside of the country, and would not be back for a good while. After a long discussion about their individual strengths and weaknesses (a discussion in which Sasori was present only 20% of the time and otherwise lost in his own thoughts), the team decided to disband briefly, at least until Sanou returned to Sunagakure, to focus on working on their own skill sets, and would rejoin to greet their teacher with improvements. Komushi was already busy studying under Chiyo as it was, and Pakura was intent on getting a better control of the skills she already had. Sasori hadn’t really wanted much else than to finish his latest project. They had their last meeting at Komushi’s mother’s okonomiyaki restaurant, and then separated for the next two months.

Pakura was nowhere to be found, likely off training to perfect her incomplete Scorch Release, a technique which Sasori regarded as aesthetically displeasing and barbaric, with the way it made a mess of the surrounding environment. She argued that this was only a result of her inability to control Fire and Wind as individual elements, which made for a clumsy Scorch, but her words fell upon deaf ears.

Komushi, however, was a sight he was seeing at least every few days, and he wasn’t entirely certain why, at first.

Before they had all decided to disband, Sasori had received a notice of request from his grandmother. Until recently, he had been merely adding modifications to already properly furnished puppets made by Chiyo and Ebizo (and occasionally, if he were so lucky, by his uncle Shamon). But his modifications were growing out of hand, and by the time he was satisfied with his work, the marionette looked entirely different from it’s base, and it was growing tiresome working around the established framework of a puppet if it didn’t match his specific needs. So he had begun to make his own from scratch, chipping away at wood, tempering steel, mixing venom, and painting. There was an artistry to his methods, that in which other crafters did not indulge, and it shined through the end product, a terrifying marionette of four long limbs and four shorter limbs titled Ryuo.

However, its size was a problem.

It was easily one of the biggest puppets he had ever seen, and it was with great misfortune that he realized soon after it was complete that there was no way he was going to be able to carry it at all, much less in a stealthy manner expected of puppet technique users. Most shinobi who were unfamiliar with sealing techniques generally carried their weapons on their backs, wrapped and contained in white strips of special bandages, courtesy of the Suna Cloth Binding Corps. Given his size, he had been forced to use pre-made puppets that came with sealed scrolls drawn for him by Ebizo and Chiyo. But this was an entirely new creation, one that did not come with a perfectly custom sealing scroll, and his face wrinkled in displeasure at the thought of having to ask his grandmother for anything. So Sasori had gone to Ebizo, the one remaining member of his family with whom he was on vaguely good terms with…

...Only to find that Ebizo was away on an ambassador’s trip to Konohagakure.

He wasn’t one to wait, and when he couldn’t find the answer in Suna’s main office library, he instead weighed his remaining options. Either Sasori could request the help of his grandmother, who certainly would know how to seal Ryuo in a scroll, given her experience. Or he could bequest the assistance of his uncle, the Kazekage, who specialized in the puppet jutsu as well.

Both were incredibly bad options, but his impatience lead to him knocking on the door to Chiyo’s office in the main government building, to ask her to come visit his home before she left for the day. She had been surprised to see him, though he could never quite tell if it was a pleasant surprise or an unpleasant one, with the way she regarded him with an intense neutrality.

But her shock when she did come to his house and see Ryuo for the first time was definitely a positive reaction, given how her voice trembled with pride.

“Did you make this yourself?” she asked, inspecting the handiwork on Ryuo’s carving. “It’s nothing like I’ve ever seen. You didn’t use a standard base for this.”

“No,” he said impatiently, growing weary of her presence in his workroom as he held out a small scroll, the size of his forearm. “From what I understand, the symbols of a seal correlate to the amount of chakra the item in question possesses. I unfortunately equipped used a chakra-based resin inside the body, so a rudimentary sealing spell won’t work.”

She looked up, an eyebrow quirked in further surprise.

“You did your research.”

“Yes,” he said again, his hand still offering her the scroll. “I’m unable to correlate the necessary characters to the corresponding chakra levels.”

“Does it have any poisoned weapons?” Chiyo couldn’t help but ask as she took it from him, unfurling it on his empty work desk.

He opened a drawer beside a particularly terrifying looking tool the size of his head and handed her a brush with ink.

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?” she asked, taking the calligraphy materials. “Genin are not allowed poisons yet.”

“I’m aware. I made it myself,” he replied dryly, looking more and more as though he’d rather she would hurry up and leave. Still, he leaned over to watch what characters she would paint onto the paper, determined to figure this out for himself so that he’d never have to be put in this position again.

Chiyo, on the other hand, was not so eager to leave, not after hearing that.

“What do you mean?” she said accusingly, her eyes narrowing. “With what? The greenhouses are heavily guarded.”

“If you mean to assume I broke into a government facility, I would appreciate if you wouldn’t make that sort of accusation,” Sasori said flatly, sounding entirely too old for his actual age. “There are plenty of perfectly harmless things that any child could get at a local store for a mere thousand ryo that would cause significant damage when mixed in the right ratios.”

“And what does your homemade poison do?”

“What any good poison on a weapon would do. Kill people.”

“Sasori,” Chiyo said warningly, sitting up from where she had sat at his desk. “You cannot just create chemical weapons like that without consent from the Suna General Hospital, the Puppet Brigade, or the office of Kazekage. What if you hurt yourself?”

He was silent on that matter, his hands behind his back and his feet placed shoulder width apart like a military officer, but his countenance stayed just as blank as it was when she had first arrived, not a single indication of regret or anxiety to be found on his perfect facade. Chiyo could not stare for so long, to see that cold, apathetic expression on a face that looked so much like her son’s.

“But I can’t deny that this --”

She gestured to Ryuo.

“-- is impressive. How old are you now? Nine? Ten?”

“Seven,” he said, and she pressed her lips into a thin line, vague concern creasing her face.

“Right. Seven. That’s an incredibly young age to be making puppets from scratch. Much less fully articulate, combat ready puppets with homemade poisons and what I can only assume are custom weapons, given the unusual shape for storage.”

Sasori only hummed disinterestedly. A lot of Ryuo had been lifted from Hisha, a previous favorite that he was forced to discard after finding its base unsuitable for the weapons he wanted in them. It had been difficult work to rebuild from bottom up, especially when he wasn’t quite big enough to use some of the tools necessary for the project, but it wasn’t entirely original. But he didn’t feel like explaining any of that to his grandmother, instead getting more and more agitated that she wasn’t painting the seal.

“Sasori, have you considered using this skill of yours for the village?” she asked. “You’re too young to be on the front lines of any of their missions, but … even Shamon didn’t complete an original piece until he was fifteen … the Puppet Brigade could benefit greatly from your contributions.”

Truthfully, he had never considered sharing his artistry with anyone, given how everyone was too blind to truly appreciate it anyway. A small, petty part of him wanted to refuse, to keep his designs for himself, to tell the rest of the village to get lost, shove Chiyo out, and instead go to his uncle for help. He scorned her mentally, for her pointless chatter.

But the other, more sensible part of him had the feeling that she would not help him with his seal dilemma unless he agreed. Give and take. He could expect nothing less, especially not from his own family.

“If you show me sealing techniques for further projects, I’ll join your brigade,” he offered.

“That’s wonderful,” she said, but her words did not match her expression, and her face was marred with something like uneasiness and concern.

Still, she wasn’t going to start telling him that she would’ve helped him even if he rejected her proposal, not when he seemed so utterly disinterested in the prospect of joining such a prestigious group of shinobi.

She finished the sealing scroll for him, instructing him on its details, and patiently waited for him to ask her for clarification, only to find that he seemed perfectly content with her explanation, despite how quickly she had gone through it. It was unsettling, she thought, that her young grandchild would pick up these trades so easily. Chiyo thought about how Komushi had said he’d wished he could understand what Sasori was thinking, and she once more shared the sentiment as the boy in question leaned over to paint the final character on the scroll, the name of his new weapon.

“龍,” his neat script said, as he left it on the table to dry.

“Dragon,” she read inquisitively. His puppet looked nothing like a dragon.

“Dragon,” he repeated. “Like the flying chariot that soars far enough into enemy territory that he becomes the dragon king.”

There was a glimmer of glee in his eyes, despite his stony face, as he stared into the damp paper, the flickering of the lantern glistening in the color of cold honey. Like a deep amber, encasing an immortalized corpse long forgotten.

His grandmother had left fairly quickly after that, and he was alright with it.

But a couple of days later, she had come to collect her dues, and Sasori found himself at the door of an open - space workshop at the center of the Puppet Brigade’s headquarters, holding the notice that he would be officiated as an apprentice puppet crafter for the corps.

So far, everyone had mistaken him for a visiting student from the Academy, and was confused to find that the verification he was holding was implying that he was an actual member of the Brigade. He didn’t mind that as much as he minded how they relaxed when they saw ‘apprentice’ listed on the notice, how patronizingly gentle they were as they directed him to the main workshop.

Sasori stood at the double doors, signs plastered all over the wood with labels warning of dangerous tools, lists of gear necessary to use certain machinery, a sign indicating that the Poisons Lab was down the hall, and other little important notices that he elected to ignore.

“Hey,” a voice called to him, and he turned around.

A man with a rather gaunt face, wearing dirty goggles on his greasy thinning head of black hair, was standing behind him, his hands on his hips as he tapped his foot impatiently. Sasori gave him a slow glance-over before sighing softly, as if disappointed.

“Wh -- cheeky brat! What the hell do you think you’re doing here?! The school tour hours are --”

“You smell like poplar,” he cut in, his lip curling in vexation. “Surely not for the base? It’s too soft a material; it’ll warp and decay quickly.”

Before he could open his mouth and complain further, the sound of rapid footsteps interrupted them both, and the young man’s frown creased even further as the stranger turned the corner into the hallway.

“What? What’re you doing here, Komushi?” he asked rather rudely. “Lady Chiyo already came by today, don’t bother us.”

“Hey, I’m on an actual errand this time, Mukade,” Komushi stuck his tongue out before running to Sasori’s side, grabbing him by the arm. “This is my errand.”

“I was under the impression that Grandmother was going to meet me here,” Sasori said, his body tensing uncomfortably as Komushi held on.

The man named Mukade’s eyes widened as Komushi laughed, shaking his head.

“She got caught up in an emergency at the hospital, so she asked that I show you around the place! I come here a lot between tasks she gives me, so I know it pretty well.”

“Hang on,” Mukade sneered, his baggy eyes narrowing as he pointed accusingly at Sasori. “ _You’re_ the new recruit coming in? You’re just a _kid_.”

“Yes,” Sasori replied dryly. “And you can’t possibly be older than your early twenties, and yet your hair is already thinning. The world is full of surprises.”

“You **_little_ **\--”

“Hold it,” called another voice from behind the two children, and they turned to face its owner. A middle-aged woman with long dark hair tied up into a series of buns was standing at the open door of the workshop, a hand on her hip as she took off her goggles, revealing deep, black eyes. “Where the hell were you? I sent you for that permit update on wolfsbane like, two hours ago and now you’re picking fights with kids?”

“Migumo…” Mukade winced as she shot him a wicked glare.

“Get lost, Komushi,” she ordered with a grin. “We’re up to some serious stuff today. Gonna coat the weapons in some really good mixes. I’d let you in and watch, but uh, this one’s got some pretty devastating effects even after you use the antidote and I don’t wanna get in trouble with Lady Chiyo.”

Komushi shook his head, digging through his waist-pouch for a small note.

“Thanks, but I actually can come in today! See, Lady Chiyo says I can! She just told me not to touch anything.”

Migumo raised a brow as she took the paper from his tiny hands, unfolding it to give it a quick scan.

“Uh, yeah,” she said through her teeth, hissing nervously at the note’s series of very serious - looking threats that would be enacted upon her if she let Komushi or Sasori get poisoned. “You’re on tour leader duty for this guy here?”

Sasori had been staring at her intently since she had made her appearance, and it was starting to get a little creepy. Her skin crawled as he watched her intently, his hooded eyes making his gaze sharper, colder. What kind of kid had those kinds of eyes?

“Nice to meet you, Sasori,” she introduced herself. “I’m Migumo. I’m the head engineer for the Brigade. I’ve never had a recruit as young as you in our division. Not to sound condescending, but can you even pick up some of our tools?”

“I’ll make do,” he said plainly, finally breaking his gaze to turn to Komushi. “You don’t have to show me around. I can figure it out.”

“Huh? No way, I wanna see this awesome poison too!” he snickered.

“Hang on, hang on --” Mukade interrupted, stomping over to them with a sneer still on his face. “You can’t just barge in here all willy-nilly just because your granny’s the leader! How old are you, even? Can you even _read_?”

“Lady Chiyo’s grandkid, huh? That makes a lot of sense,” Migumo whistled. “I got that feeling; you look just like Satsuki, but your hair’s just like Senri, the old bastard. Mukade!”

She snapped at his direction, and Mukade’s skinny little arms whipped to his side as he stood to attention.

“I don’t wanna hear you talking shit about Satsuki’s kid! Especially not from the asshole who _still_ hasn’t gotten that permit renewal! Do I have to do everything myself, twerp?”

Sasori was wordless this entire time, his eyes shifting to Mukade, who still had the audacity to give him a vicious, seething glare despite the fact that he was currently being intensely scolded. His face was stony in response, blinking blankly.

“S-Sorry … the office was closed for lunch…”

“Zip it, twig-man,” Migumo ordered, turning back to Sasori. “Do you have your verification letter?”

He handed her his notice, and she hummed as she skimmed it as well.

“Looks good to me. C’mon, both of you put these on and follow me,” she dug her hand into a huge side pocket on the jacket she was wearing, tossing them both safety gloves. “And you, get back to that renewal, or I’ll skin you a new one!”

Before Mukade could slink away bitterly, Sasori stopped him.

“If you’re going down to the Poison Permits Office, you might as well run me an errand too,” he called out as he held up another small set of papers, bound together with a paperclip.

The man had half a mind to snatch it from his tiny babyish hands and tear it up in front of him, but was stopped by Migumo’s expectant gaze. He sniffed in frustration as he took the papers from the younger boy and sulked away.

“What was that about?” Komushi asked, releasing Sasori only to put on his gloves and quickly linked back with him.

“I got scolded by grandmother,” he shrugged as they entered the main workshop.

 

A couple of corridors down, Mukade snuck a quick look at the papers that the boy had given him. They were documents detailing a new, deadly concoction, one he had never heard of, using completely common ingredients. He raised a brow, wondering why Lady Chiyo had opted to make a poison out of such limited contents, only to choke on his own breath when he saw the requester’s name listed as none other than “Chikamatsu, Sasori”.

 

-

 

The tour around the headquarters went about as expected. The room inside was an open workshop area divided into sections for woodwork, metalwork, seals, and poison application. But it was otherwise a brightly lit room that smelled like wood chippings and dust, and the concrete floor was caked in shavings. A group of twenty people ran about on individual projects, slipping in and out of the workshop throughout the day, all wearing the same pair of goggles. Sasori begrudgingly admitted to himself that this was, in a way, incredibly interesting, despite his stubborn resolve to Not Have Fun. His grandmother wouldn’t get her way and make herself feel better just because she had let him in what was essentially the playground of his dreams. Just because he was now enlisted in the Brigade that she lead, it didn’t mean he had to be anything more than a member under her command.

And not even an official member, at that. An _apprentice_.

As interesting as the machinery and the new carving techniques were to him, the whole place was too bright, too loud, too filled with the dangers of being occupied by other _people_. He itched to drop this whole charade and run back to his own workshop. But he had cut a deal with Chiyo, even if he was beginning to wonder if it was too deep, and Komushi had an iron grip on his arm. Escaping would be difficult, at any rate.

He would carve himself a sanctuary out of this annoying building, he thought to himself decisively.

Komushi had already made himself familiar with many of the people here, and he was happy to receive candy and cheery high-fives from older, more seasoned shinobi than he. Sasori, on the other hand, was less than pleased when offered the same treatment, and started to grow snappish by the time they were on their way to the Poisons lab.

He was getting tired of the surprised looks and impressed remarks about his skill relative to his age. There was always something to be said about his age. There was nothing particularly impressive about it to him, and it was becoming more and more annoying to realize that no one else seemed to understand that _they_ were the ones behind, and that Sasori should be a _standard_. Weren’t they embarrassed with themselves, being shown up by a seven - year old? Komushi, sensing Sasori’s aggravation, pulled him aside in the empty hallway between the engineering lab and the poisons lab.

“Is something the matter? You seem kinda mad,” he began, only for Sasori to tear his arm from Komushi’s grip.

He ignored him and continued down the hallway.

“Huh? Wait, hang on! Is it because I’ve been holding your arm? Do you not like being touched?”

That was one thing, yes, but he had grown so used to Komushi invading his personal space that it wasn’t even the source of the problem anymore. The boy chased after Sasori, bombarding him with questions, until Sasori finally stopped, and Komushi nearly ran into him.

“You’re shameless,” Sasori said slowly. “Accepting candies and playing around like it’s a game. You’re not a shinobi, you’re a _civilian_.”

Komushi said nothing, eyes wide in confusion as his younger teammate continued with an uncharacteristic frustration to his usual dry tone, his tongue laced in vexation and cruelty as he sneered.

“Grandmother must really be senile, to take on a student like _you_.”

He paused, twinging in hurt as Sasori gazed at him, unimpressed, almost disappointed, even. The memory of becoming Chiyo’s official student, a mere week ago, lay engraved freshly in his mind. The memory of her office, her words, her hurt, and her relief washed over him. And when he closed his eyes, he remembered _why_.

 

“Komushi,” she had began. “Why don't we make a deal?”

He cocked his head in confusion, a pencil still twirling between his fingers as Chiyo sat before him, steel-faced with an intense resolve.

“I mean, I guess it depends on what it is, but I’ll help whatever way I can!”

She nearly deflated. What an innocent gesture of trust. It was decidedly un-shinobi-like, but she couldn’t help how tender she felt when seeing him grin brightly, swinging his legs on the chair.

She remembered when Sasori had been like that, wide-eyed and soft, and that tenderness felt sharp in her chest.

“Your Sensei said you had a good grasp of chakra control,” Chiyo continued anyway, ignoring the lingering feeling of hurt. “Which is vital to any medical ninjutsu. But I can’t understand why you’d opt for a path in healing arts when chakra control is really necessary for _any_ type of ninjutsu. Wouldn’t you rather specialize in an offensive art?”

“Oh,” he said softly, his smile slipping as he looked down at his still-swinging feet. “That. Uh. Actually, I’ve tried a couple of things. Genjutsu, mostly, since it was what I was best at in the Academy.”

“Then why?”

Komushi leaned back into his seat, his countenance shifting into something she’d never seen before on him, his eyebrows creasing as his smile wavered into an uncertain grin.

“This is kinda embarrassing, but … did you know that Sasori gets bad dreams when he sleeps? Every time I come over and he’s taking a nap, he’s always shifting around, frowning like he’s scared. And then he wakes up totally normal, no trouble or crying or anything, but he looks tired. Like he’s been running all night.”

She did not, in fact, know this. Her hands clenched on her desk, eyes turned away as she stewed in a guilt she couldn’t explain. Komushi didn’t notice, continuing anyway.

“So sometimes, I used to put him in a genjutsu, so he wouldn’t have any dreams at all. But y’know, I can’t do it forever. It takes up a lot chakra to do something like that, and it’s exhausting. I can’t fix his night. But I used to have bad dreams too, when my dad died. You know I’m from a civilian family, right? M’dad was a merchant. He got killed by a bunch of rogue bandits on his way back from a trade. When I found out, I was so scared that they were gonna come for me too. It’s super silly, but I was like, six or seven, so you know --”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Chiyo said somberly, meaning it.

Komushi shook his head, laughing.

“No, it’s not your fault. But y’know what my mom said? She said that I was having bad dreams because I was hiding my fears in my head, instead of trusting them with her. Because she loved me and took good care of me, I stopped getting bad dreams. So I think I have to love and take care of Sasori too, just like Mom does.”

He swung his legs thoughtfully and laughed nervously, a blush dusting his cheeks.

“I decided I wanted to be a shinobi so I could help people like my dad, who needed it most. And right now, I think Sasori needs it a lot. Both my teammates are such _powerhouses_ \-- Pakura’s from an amazing clan with a bloodline limit and Sasori’s a prodigy of the Chikamatsu family. The best I can do is wield chakra a little better than average, but my teammates are more than average. With those two on the front lines, they’re bound to get hurt. So the most useful I can be is in the back, making sure they’re okay. That’s what a healer does. And maybe, if I can help him with like, y’know, broken bones and bruises during the day, I can cure his nights too.”

“Komushi…” Chiyo said softly, her stern demeanor melting away entirely as she gazed at him with grateful eyes.

How lucky it was, that Sasori had found such a thoughtful friend. Perhaps he could do all the things she never could.

“AUGGHH! Now I’m all embarrassed!!” he laughed, slamming the legs of his chair against the floor. Komushi shook his head, rubbing his red face with his hands. “Lady Chiyo, you better not tell him I said that! He might get mad at me!”

“No,” she said kindly, noting how flustered he got at thought of her grandson. “No, this will be between us. I share your sentiment, Komushi … but I’m not in any position to help him.”

“Huh?” he looked at her between his fingers. “You’re his grandma _and_ the councilwoman _and_ the hospital director! You can do anything!”

“Well …” she said slowly, hesitation seeping in her tone. “That … may be the reason why I can’t do anything at all.”

“Huh … that makes sense, you’re a really important lady. And important people are busy,” he nodded understandingly. “Lucky for you, I have all the time in the world, being a no-good genin! I’ll let you know how Sasori’s doing, if you want!”

“Ah, well --”

“And I know you’re gonna say this, ‘cause you’re just like him,” Komushi said sternly, holding up a hand. “You don’t actually have to take me in as your student in exchange. Sasori’s my teammate, and we’re gonna be teammates for a long time. If he does well, we all do well. No sweat!”

And for the first time in a long time, Chiyo burst out in a hearty laugh, shaking her head at her foolish new pupil.

“Well, even so, how could I say no a prospective student with such proper ambitions?”

 

But now, Komushi sighed deeply, staring back at the teammate who sneered the title of _grandmother_ as he scorned them both.

“Maybe she _is_ senile,” he shrugged. “But she’s not a fool, don’t you think?”

Sasori clicked his tongue disdainfully and turned away, committing himself to finishing the tour by himself. Komushi did not reach to hold him again, but followed after, carefully, like a shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As much as I love slowly drawing this out, I really can't wait to get to the fun bits. Geez, relationship development takes a long time!
> 
> More notes!
> 
> \- The name of Sasori's new puppet comes from the 'promoted rook' in shogi. 'Hisha', is 'the flying chariot', which is a called a rook, and then when it reaches the other end of the player board into enemy lines, it promotes to 'Ryuo', the 'dragon king', and is able to move like a rook and a king.
> 
> \- Migumo's name comes from Mi (beautiful) and Kumo (spider). Mukade is 'centipede'; its a name shared in canon by Sasori's assistant whose corpse is used as Kisame's double and by the puppeteer antagonist in the Lost Tower movie. I lifted his appearance from the movie and I'm probably just going to mix and mash as I go. There really aren't a lot of canonical Suna characters old enough for me to play with :( Interestingly enough, Sasori's name is 'scorpion' and Komushi's name is 'midge', which is apparently some sort of fly, so Kishimoto really likes bug names for Suna nin, hence why I went with spider for Migumo!
> 
> \- Chiyo looked at Komushi and said gay rights!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
